My father, as I've mentioned before, is from a weird little country called Estonia. Sometimes kids whose ethnic backgrounds are different are a little ashamed or embarrassed to talk about it. I grew up in a neighborhood of New York City that was/is 80% Italian and everyone there was extremely proud of their heritage. They proudly went about their days wearing T-shirts with the Italian flag on them, driving cars with the red devil horn/chili pepper hanging from the rear-view, speaking that strangely American working-class Italian-English dialect whenever they ordered lunch meat. I was actually traumatized as a small child by the guys who worked in the deli across the street. My parents and/or grandmother used to send me there on a daily basis to buy things like American Cheese, salami, ham and bologna - those things were fine to order; but there were days when the menu of the house called for exotic things like "mozzarella" and "capacolla". If I pronounced the former the American way, as "MOTTS-A-RELLA" they guys in the deli would point at my five-year-old face and laugh at me.
"Ha! What do you want, kid? MOTTS-A-RELLA? Is that some kind of apple sauce?"
I would stand there humiliated while the other patrons looked at my little blond head and laughed in unison with the guys behind the deli counter.
I knew full well that I could go in there and say I wanted the cheese the way they wanted me to say it, which was/is - MUTS-A-DELL. If I had the personality I have now, then, I would have asked them, "what's that? A broken computer?" Of course, Dell didn't exist at that time, but it's just a supposition. I probably wouldn't even do it now anyway.
I always returned from the deli defeated. It got to a point where I could only order mozerella by brand name and the brand that I was able to pronounce tasted like window caulking - or what I would imagine caulk to taste like.
Capacolla was another issue. Thankfully, this was a rare order in my house but it was virtually impossible to pronounce the way they wanted me to in the deli. I think those goombas used to call it "Gabba-Gool" and I just refused to order this after a few humiliations in the deli. Much later in life, after I had been to Italy a couple of times, I realized how stupid all of these people were and got over my past traumas. These things take time sometimes. I no longer feel intimidated for the gumbas, just sorry. The cool thing is that they don't care. That's the good thing about goombas.
So, back to my weird Estonian heritage. I can't say that there's anything that's so different about my father's ways. I can only say that everything is almost completely different. He does everything his own way. There have been virtually no developments in his repetoir since he crossed the Atlantic through a hurricane in 1948.
As a child, I remember him laughig riotously at every joke he told - none of which made the least bit of sense when he translated them from standard English to his own version of English. He'd listen to jokes in the bar he hung out in after work and come back and tell my mother the thing - usually something highly inappropriate for family listening. The thing was it didn't matter because the joke was so mangled that it was no longer really dirty. We could tell that it was supposed to be a dirty joke but that my father had misunderstood it so completely that he lost the filth somewhere in there yet it still seemed to him to be a riot. My mother usually stopped listening after the part where "a naked woman walks up to a priest" and started planning her next pair of shoes in her head. "Oh, that was a good one, Elm", she'd say.
Well, that's dad. He was always surprising us with something.
Since mom hated to cook, he often gave it a whirl but it was almost always a waste of food. My brothers and sisters were older so they could just flat-out refuse to eat but I, as a small child, had to eat or at least pretend to eat whatever he put out on the table. I dreaded the days when he was in the mood to cook. I remember the fried steak that was cooked for about forty-five seconds, the canned string-beans that were cooked for forty-five minutes to the point of tastelessness, or the boiled french fries.
I remember the first time I saw the french fries sitting in a pool of tepid water.
"What's this?", I asked?
"French fries."
"What happened to them?"
"Just eat them. They're good."
"They look sick. Why are they in water?"
"I boiled them."
"Why?"
"We had no oil. Just sit and eat."
I passed on the fries.
Being a non-Italian was hard. Being half Estonian was harder at times. Life is not always so easy but really, why should your ethnic background be such a pain the the ass? At least growing up relieves some of the ass pain.
Sunday, October 29, 2006
Sunday, October 15, 2006
Diet 7-Up and the Cure for Borderline Diabetes
I was perched up on the Formica counter chatting with my brother Aldo and his eventual wife, Drucilla about Patrick Ewing's chances of being named rookie of the year when the smoke started turning the corner from the hallway to the kitchen.
We didn't give it much thought since we knew Gerty'd been boiling herself in the bath for the last three hours and this was the usual fallout from the pressure-cooked dousings she subjected herself to every evening after work.
She used to get the steam from the hot baths lodged so deeply into her pours that she'd sweat for about two hours after. She had to keep this giant turban-towel around her three-feet of hair to keep it appropriately moist for the next day so it would seem like she washed it in the morning rather than the day before. I'm sure between the wet mop of hair and the steam-filled pours of her body she weighed at least an extra 10 pounds when she finally slo-mo geysered out of the bathing chamber.
So, Aldo, Drucy and I were sitting around yaking it up when Gerty entered the kitchen for a her nightly water-guzzling ritual whereby she stood in front of the open fridge, removed a large soda-bottle filled with cold water and proceeded to suck down the contents until the bottle flattened into a great collapsed origami lung. Once the water was sufficiently expunged, she started searching through the refrigerator. For what? More water? That wasn't enough?
Aldo and I had kind of seen this routine before but Drucilla was new to this scene and kind of grossed out by the sight of my pruned-out bathrobe-wearing sweat-ball turbaned sister inhaling a half-gallon of water in six point five seconds, all the while not even acknowledging our existence though we were three feet in front of her.
Well, she hadn't acknowledged our existence until she realized that what she was looking for in the fridge was in fact, not there.
"What happened to my Diet 7-Up?", Gerty interrogated.
Aldo and I were kind of wrapped up in our conversation and Drucy was just sort of quietly observing the scene as if it she were not really in the room. Since we weren't all that interested in where her Diet 7-Up had gone, we didn't answer.
"Hello? Are you deaf? Where is my Diet 7-Up?"
"Ma must have drunk it", Aldo answered back.
"Well, I need it quickly or I might go into a diabetic coma."
Now, Aldo and I were not so cruel as to allow Gerty to go into a diabetic coma by simply denying her request. We denied her request because we didn't believe that she was going to go into a coma, nor did we accept that she was a borderline diabetic.
You might wonder how we could be so callous...Cruel even. But don't wonder. Just accept that Gerty was and is simply a bit of a sometimes-lovable and sometimes infuriating nutcase.
So, Aldo and I didn't respond at all.
"EJ, I need you to go and get me some Diet 7-Up right now."
"Gerty. It's almost 9. The deli is closing and I am in the middle of a conversation. So, I'm sorry but, no. You'll have to get dressed and go yourself."
"Do you understand that I'm a borderline diabetic and I could go into a hyperosmolar coma? I'm dehydrated and I need to balance out all the sugar I've been eating all day."
"And Diet 7-Up will somehow save you from going into a diabetic coma? Come on, Gerty. Do we look stupid to you?"
"Don't argue with me. I was a Phys-Ed major and I know a quite a few things about the human body, okay. Now, I need Diet 7-Up and I need it now so just go to the store and get it for me and stop being a jerk about it."
"No", was all I replied. Aldo started mocking her, "diet 7-up - like that's friggin insulin or something. Are you retarded?"
Drucilla was still silent, looking very uncomfortable.
Then we started chatting again, trying to ignore Gerty who by this time was on all-fours on the kitchen floor.
Drucy looked a little worried - like maybe it was time for her to go home - when Gerty held her head and let out this annoying moan that I suppose was intended to convince us that she was actually melting into a hyper-super-awesome-molar coma (or whatever it was called) and then she screatched out some words that were at-first hard to identify but which sounded something like, "ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh" which loosely translated to 'if I don't get Diet 7-Up now I'm going to die!' and with that, I jumped off the counter and hiked the two blocks to Roma's deli to get her stupid Diet 7-Up-icilin.
I think when I got back, Drucilla was gone. I was sure she would never be back, but then Aldo must have convinced her that whatever Gerty had wasn't contagious, or maybe that Diet 7-Up really was a cure for dehydrated diabetics.
We didn't give it much thought since we knew Gerty'd been boiling herself in the bath for the last three hours and this was the usual fallout from the pressure-cooked dousings she subjected herself to every evening after work.
She used to get the steam from the hot baths lodged so deeply into her pours that she'd sweat for about two hours after. She had to keep this giant turban-towel around her three-feet of hair to keep it appropriately moist for the next day so it would seem like she washed it in the morning rather than the day before. I'm sure between the wet mop of hair and the steam-filled pours of her body she weighed at least an extra 10 pounds when she finally slo-mo geysered out of the bathing chamber.
So, Aldo, Drucy and I were sitting around yaking it up when Gerty entered the kitchen for a her nightly water-guzzling ritual whereby she stood in front of the open fridge, removed a large soda-bottle filled with cold water and proceeded to suck down the contents until the bottle flattened into a great collapsed origami lung. Once the water was sufficiently expunged, she started searching through the refrigerator. For what? More water? That wasn't enough?
Aldo and I had kind of seen this routine before but Drucilla was new to this scene and kind of grossed out by the sight of my pruned-out bathrobe-wearing sweat-ball turbaned sister inhaling a half-gallon of water in six point five seconds, all the while not even acknowledging our existence though we were three feet in front of her.
Well, she hadn't acknowledged our existence until she realized that what she was looking for in the fridge was in fact, not there.
"What happened to my Diet 7-Up?", Gerty interrogated.
Aldo and I were kind of wrapped up in our conversation and Drucy was just sort of quietly observing the scene as if it she were not really in the room. Since we weren't all that interested in where her Diet 7-Up had gone, we didn't answer.
"Hello? Are you deaf? Where is my Diet 7-Up?"
"Ma must have drunk it", Aldo answered back.
"Well, I need it quickly or I might go into a diabetic coma."
Now, Aldo and I were not so cruel as to allow Gerty to go into a diabetic coma by simply denying her request. We denied her request because we didn't believe that she was going to go into a coma, nor did we accept that she was a borderline diabetic.
You might wonder how we could be so callous...Cruel even. But don't wonder. Just accept that Gerty was and is simply a bit of a sometimes-lovable and sometimes infuriating nutcase.
So, Aldo and I didn't respond at all.
"EJ, I need you to go and get me some Diet 7-Up right now."
"Gerty. It's almost 9. The deli is closing and I am in the middle of a conversation. So, I'm sorry but, no. You'll have to get dressed and go yourself."
"Do you understand that I'm a borderline diabetic and I could go into a hyperosmolar coma? I'm dehydrated and I need to balance out all the sugar I've been eating all day."
"And Diet 7-Up will somehow save you from going into a diabetic coma? Come on, Gerty. Do we look stupid to you?"
"Don't argue with me. I was a Phys-Ed major and I know a quite a few things about the human body, okay. Now, I need Diet 7-Up and I need it now so just go to the store and get it for me and stop being a jerk about it."
"No", was all I replied. Aldo started mocking her, "diet 7-up - like that's friggin insulin or something. Are you retarded?"
Drucilla was still silent, looking very uncomfortable.
Then we started chatting again, trying to ignore Gerty who by this time was on all-fours on the kitchen floor.
Drucy looked a little worried - like maybe it was time for her to go home - when Gerty held her head and let out this annoying moan that I suppose was intended to convince us that she was actually melting into a hyper-super-awesome-molar coma (or whatever it was called) and then she screatched out some words that were at-first hard to identify but which sounded something like, "ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh" which loosely translated to 'if I don't get Diet 7-Up now I'm going to die!' and with that, I jumped off the counter and hiked the two blocks to Roma's deli to get her stupid Diet 7-Up-icilin.
I think when I got back, Drucilla was gone. I was sure she would never be back, but then Aldo must have convinced her that whatever Gerty had wasn't contagious, or maybe that Diet 7-Up really was a cure for dehydrated diabetics.
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
JUG
When I was in High School or, as I used to call it then, "prison", I was a fairly good kid. I mostly kept to myself, I mostly obeyed the rules and I usually displayed outward respect for my teachers and the school staff despite feeling that they were all a bunch of nacos.
Despite my calm and quiet, respectful demeanor, I was somehow thought to be a particularly dangerous problem for the Dean of Disciplin, Mr. Queery.
Queery was not so much a man as a robot.
Even his voice radiated the sickly mental dust from the reruns of Lost In Space on an old black and white rabbit-eared TV set. Since Queery was evil, he was more like a combination of the robot and Doctor Smith. He used to call to me with his robotic arm, gesturing for me to come to look at the clipboard in his hand so he could write my name on it.
"Mr. Sepp", he'd say as he looked at the clipboard. "You have JUG. Report to room 145 at 2:35."
"Why? What did I do?!"
"You're slacks are not proper dress slack material."
"These? These are so dress pants. I wear them all the time"
"Well, the you've been getting away with murder, Mr. Sepp. They are not regulation fabric."
"Yes. These pants are dress pants. You cannot tell me that they are not dress pants!"
"They are not dress pants, Mr. Sepp. If you keep arguing with me you will have two days of JUG".
I guess I deserved this JUG punishment. After all I was killing small African children by wearing non-standard-fabric Bill Blass dress pants to school.
JUG was rumored to stand for JUSTICE UNDER GOD and it was just a CARDINAL SPELLMAN word for 'detention'. It was a waste of an hour after school but at least I did some homework when I was there when they decided to let us do it. Sometimes doing anything was forbidden and we had to just sit at our desks with our hands folded neatly. JUG was, after all, a punishment for doing awful things like wearing bad fabric or not having our ties so tight that we couldn't breathe or letting our hair grow one milimeter below our shirt collars.
It's no wonder I was ADD when I literally spent every other day of my first year of High School in JUG doing nothing but staring at Sister Angelica's beard and wondering why she didn't get a Gillette Contour Plus razor and shave those suckers right off there. Maybe it was too embarassing to go to Duane Reade and ask for a man's razor when you were a nun. She could have dressed like a man or even taken off the habit and pretended to be a normal woman shopping for her husband. Of course the cashier would have noticed the beard and realized that this woman was actually buying the razor for herself.
Maybe she could have asked one of the other nuns to wax it for her in the convent loo. Then again, where would these convent nuns get the wax? Maybe they could make it. After all, don't nuns spend a lot of time in nature and have easy access to the common wax plant? Then again, these were city nuns - Bronx nuns. They probably don't know anything about making wax. So, I suppose she could send one of the non-bearded nuns to a beauty supply shop and have her buy a tub of wax with which to tear off her muttonchops. But then maybe it was too embarrassing for her to confide in any of the other nuns enough to send them on such a mission. Yet aren't all nuns supposed to be on a mission? Perhaps other kinds of missions.
You see where all this is going, don't you?
Exactly.
Mr. Queery will have a lot to answer for in the next life.
Despite my calm and quiet, respectful demeanor, I was somehow thought to be a particularly dangerous problem for the Dean of Disciplin, Mr. Queery.
Queery was not so much a man as a robot.
Even his voice radiated the sickly mental dust from the reruns of Lost In Space on an old black and white rabbit-eared TV set. Since Queery was evil, he was more like a combination of the robot and Doctor Smith. He used to call to me with his robotic arm, gesturing for me to come to look at the clipboard in his hand so he could write my name on it.
"Mr. Sepp", he'd say as he looked at the clipboard. "You have JUG. Report to room 145 at 2:35."
"Why? What did I do?!"
"You're slacks are not proper dress slack material."
"These? These are so dress pants. I wear them all the time"
"Well, the you've been getting away with murder, Mr. Sepp. They are not regulation fabric."
"Yes. These pants are dress pants. You cannot tell me that they are not dress pants!"
"They are not dress pants, Mr. Sepp. If you keep arguing with me you will have two days of JUG".
I guess I deserved this JUG punishment. After all I was killing small African children by wearing non-standard-fabric Bill Blass dress pants to school.
JUG was rumored to stand for JUSTICE UNDER GOD and it was just a CARDINAL SPELLMAN word for 'detention'. It was a waste of an hour after school but at least I did some homework when I was there when they decided to let us do it. Sometimes doing anything was forbidden and we had to just sit at our desks with our hands folded neatly. JUG was, after all, a punishment for doing awful things like wearing bad fabric or not having our ties so tight that we couldn't breathe or letting our hair grow one milimeter below our shirt collars.
It's no wonder I was ADD when I literally spent every other day of my first year of High School in JUG doing nothing but staring at Sister Angelica's beard and wondering why she didn't get a Gillette Contour Plus razor and shave those suckers right off there. Maybe it was too embarassing to go to Duane Reade and ask for a man's razor when you were a nun. She could have dressed like a man or even taken off the habit and pretended to be a normal woman shopping for her husband. Of course the cashier would have noticed the beard and realized that this woman was actually buying the razor for herself.
Maybe she could have asked one of the other nuns to wax it for her in the convent loo. Then again, where would these convent nuns get the wax? Maybe they could make it. After all, don't nuns spend a lot of time in nature and have easy access to the common wax plant? Then again, these were city nuns - Bronx nuns. They probably don't know anything about making wax. So, I suppose she could send one of the non-bearded nuns to a beauty supply shop and have her buy a tub of wax with which to tear off her muttonchops. But then maybe it was too embarrassing for her to confide in any of the other nuns enough to send them on such a mission. Yet aren't all nuns supposed to be on a mission? Perhaps other kinds of missions.
You see where all this is going, don't you?
Exactly.
Mr. Queery will have a lot to answer for in the next life.
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
Why I Think it's Disturbing When People Accidentally Sit on Things that Get Lodged in their Ass
Okay, so I'm straying from my usual personal history today to get something off my chest.
A recent conversation I had with a radiologist has had the rusty wheels in my head doing quite a bit of spinning lately.
He told me about something that I had heard before but it was second-hand information so I took it less seriously. Now I feel I must speak out.
What really bothers me is that we live in a society where people regularly go to emergency rooms at various hospitals around the world complaining of stomach pain. Once they are x-rayed it is discovered that a large object such as a flashlight, a reading lamp, a cell phone or (most commonly) a vibrator has been lodged in the intenstine, most likely through the anus.
When asked how this object got into their intestines, most patients seem to answer that "they accidentally sat on it".
How, is the question that immediatly comes to the mind of the Radiologist, but is seldom asked. You see, we live in a society where people are okay with randomly sticking large electrical devices through the sphincter and subsequently losing them, but those same people will be offended if you ask them why they did that. So, they lie. They say they sat on them.
Now, even if I'm completely naked and reading a really engrossing novel or watching game seven of the NBA finals and it's in overtime, I don't think I'm going to accidentally sit on my umbrella (which is so oddly placed on my sofa as to be ready to penetrate my clenched sphincter) so hard that it will go up my ass and I'll lose it there. It just can't happen.
Of course, I might get e-mails from random readers who will insist that yes, indeed it is possible to sit on your cell phone and have it travel through your intestines. But I don't buy it. End of story. Even if you're "used to" having things shoved up your ass, a big Hello Kitty vibrator won't just slip in without you putting in a little effort.
Now as to why it bothers me so.
The fact is, there are a lot of problems going on in the world. People are dying in wars and famine. Cancer, AIDS, bird flu - countless diseases take lives every day. But there are people who have so little in their lives that they are sitting around their houses and apartments in big cities like New York - probably making more in a year than I will ever make in my lifetime - searching their dwellings for the biggest knickknack that can possibly fit through the anal orifice in the hope that it will give them some kind of pleasure.
I say these people need to be hurded like bored cattle and sent to Lebenon to stand at the frontlines and protect the innocent - take a grenade or two for some child who has nothing.
It would save insurance companies some money on patients who don't deserve coverage.
That brings to mind a good question: is that covered?
A recent conversation I had with a radiologist has had the rusty wheels in my head doing quite a bit of spinning lately.
He told me about something that I had heard before but it was second-hand information so I took it less seriously. Now I feel I must speak out.
What really bothers me is that we live in a society where people regularly go to emergency rooms at various hospitals around the world complaining of stomach pain. Once they are x-rayed it is discovered that a large object such as a flashlight, a reading lamp, a cell phone or (most commonly) a vibrator has been lodged in the intenstine, most likely through the anus.
When asked how this object got into their intestines, most patients seem to answer that "they accidentally sat on it".
How, is the question that immediatly comes to the mind of the Radiologist, but is seldom asked. You see, we live in a society where people are okay with randomly sticking large electrical devices through the sphincter and subsequently losing them, but those same people will be offended if you ask them why they did that. So, they lie. They say they sat on them.
Now, even if I'm completely naked and reading a really engrossing novel or watching game seven of the NBA finals and it's in overtime, I don't think I'm going to accidentally sit on my umbrella (which is so oddly placed on my sofa as to be ready to penetrate my clenched sphincter) so hard that it will go up my ass and I'll lose it there. It just can't happen.
Of course, I might get e-mails from random readers who will insist that yes, indeed it is possible to sit on your cell phone and have it travel through your intestines. But I don't buy it. End of story. Even if you're "used to" having things shoved up your ass, a big Hello Kitty vibrator won't just slip in without you putting in a little effort.
Now as to why it bothers me so.
The fact is, there are a lot of problems going on in the world. People are dying in wars and famine. Cancer, AIDS, bird flu - countless diseases take lives every day. But there are people who have so little in their lives that they are sitting around their houses and apartments in big cities like New York - probably making more in a year than I will ever make in my lifetime - searching their dwellings for the biggest knickknack that can possibly fit through the anal orifice in the hope that it will give them some kind of pleasure.
I say these people need to be hurded like bored cattle and sent to Lebenon to stand at the frontlines and protect the innocent - take a grenade or two for some child who has nothing.
It would save insurance companies some money on patients who don't deserve coverage.
That brings to mind a good question: is that covered?
Wednesday, August 09, 2006
Sick All the Time
I'm sick today and I haven't entered anything for a while. I've been busy getting engaged and all that jazz. Anyway, I'm sick and have been reflecting on the fact that I have a crappy immune system and as it's my style to find ways to blame other people for any and all of my problems, I have decided it's my mother's fault that I am sick.
Why? How? Those are fair questions and I have the answers.
First off, my mother didn't breast feed me.
Need I say more?
My body lacks the antibodies to fight diseases! All because my mother was too shy to breastfeed! Oh, that upsets me.
I investigated by using the modern day bible, AKA, "the net" and found this:
"Human milk is baby's first immunization. It provides antibodies which protect baby from many common respiratory and intestinal diseases, and also contains living immune cells. First milk, colostrum, is packed with components which increase immunity and protect the newborn's intestines. Artificially fed babies have higher rates of middle ear infections, pneumonia, and cases of gastroenteritis (stomach flu). Breastfeeding as an infant also provides protection from developing immune system cancers such as lymphoma, bowel diseases such as Crohn's disease and celiac sprue, and juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, all of which are related to immune system function. And breastfed babies generally mount a more effective response to childhood immunizations. In all these cases, benefits begin immediately, and increase with increasing duration of breastfeeding."
I am not sure what is more disturbing - the information that my mother has left me with a sub-par immune system of the part where it says "Breastfeeding as an infant also provides protection from developing immune system cancers..." which suggests that some might breasfeed as non-infants.
So there really is not "second off" as I don't think there is any more evidence that I need to present.
That being said, I don't really blame my mother for not breast feeding me. If I were a woman I would not want some baby sucking my tit either. It's just gross. If I can get it in a can, why the hell not get it in a can. Isn't that called progress?
So, now I think I might want to blame the scientific community for not better replicating breastmilk. Hell, with all the money being poured into research for every kind of crap you can think of, why can't they develop formulae that exceed the health benefits of natural breastmilk?
I blame society, the scientific community, the government, my teachers, the national parks department, and any organization that has ever received public funds.
Why? How? Those are fair questions and I have the answers.
First off, my mother didn't breast feed me.
Need I say more?
My body lacks the antibodies to fight diseases! All because my mother was too shy to breastfeed! Oh, that upsets me.
I investigated by using the modern day bible, AKA, "the net" and found this:
"Human milk is baby's first immunization. It provides antibodies which protect baby from many common respiratory and intestinal diseases, and also contains living immune cells. First milk, colostrum, is packed with components which increase immunity and protect the newborn's intestines. Artificially fed babies have higher rates of middle ear infections, pneumonia, and cases of gastroenteritis (stomach flu). Breastfeeding as an infant also provides protection from developing immune system cancers such as lymphoma, bowel diseases such as Crohn's disease and celiac sprue, and juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, all of which are related to immune system function. And breastfed babies generally mount a more effective response to childhood immunizations. In all these cases, benefits begin immediately, and increase with increasing duration of breastfeeding."
I am not sure what is more disturbing - the information that my mother has left me with a sub-par immune system of the part where it says "Breastfeeding as an infant also provides protection from developing immune system cancers..." which suggests that some might breasfeed as non-infants.
So there really is not "second off" as I don't think there is any more evidence that I need to present.
That being said, I don't really blame my mother for not breast feeding me. If I were a woman I would not want some baby sucking my tit either. It's just gross. If I can get it in a can, why the hell not get it in a can. Isn't that called progress?
So, now I think I might want to blame the scientific community for not better replicating breastmilk. Hell, with all the money being poured into research for every kind of crap you can think of, why can't they develop formulae that exceed the health benefits of natural breastmilk?
I blame society, the scientific community, the government, my teachers, the national parks department, and any organization that has ever received public funds.
Thursday, July 20, 2006
Stupiditude
I believe I've mentioned before that I often thought of myself as a really intelligent retarded person. This was particularly true when I was in school. I often found myself unable to understand anything that was going on in my classes. Of course, now I realize it was simply because I wasn't paying attention to what the instructor was saying and when I read the books I usually was thinking about where I'd go if I had enough money to travel around the world.
My travel interest inspired me to think about how great it would be if I could become a photo journalist for National Geographic. I have never really read National Geographic, but I've often looked at the pictures. I like pictures. Especially the pretty ones. Pretty pictures make me happy.
I have no idea why, with this kind of mind that sometimes seems so limited, I have always had an attitude when it comes to my perceptions of other peoples' intelligence. I am immediatly annoyed by those I perceive to be below my intellectual level. Yet deep inside I know that my intellectual level is not so high. I constantly meet people who are probably smarter than me but I seem unable to believe it because often very smart people are not very polished in physical presentation, nor in verbiage. Though I have to point out here that I tend to think of "smart" people as those who are skilled in math and the sciences as I have no idea what the hell those people are talking about most of the time and so they seem like they have brains that work better than mine. At the same time I find them to be socially inept and look down on them anyway.
Then there's also this testing problem I seem to have developed around eleventh grade - you know - when standardized tests actually seem to matter. I had always done pretty well on them and then boom - I was statistically retarded. Was I simply psyching myself out? Did I have a brain aneurysm in my sleep which killed a bunch of my smart cells? Am I an idiot for thinking that an aneurysm could have done that? Do I want to do the research involved to find out? Is my increasing laziness a symptom of my decreasing perspicacity? Am I being pretentious when I use words like 'perspicacity'? Does that word even exist? Do you think I'm even interested in finding out? Maybe. I like words. I'm not always sure how to use them but I like to try.
I've always liked words and sentences and how things sound and look. I assume that there is some kind of nearly useless intelligence there but sadly we live in a world that values test scores and statistics. I find that to be very annoying and it forces me to concluded that we live in a world run by idiots - even if they are good at math and scored 1300 or more on their SATs.
What really pisses me off is that those bastards are getting all the high-paying jobs.
My travel interest inspired me to think about how great it would be if I could become a photo journalist for National Geographic. I have never really read National Geographic, but I've often looked at the pictures. I like pictures. Especially the pretty ones. Pretty pictures make me happy.
I have no idea why, with this kind of mind that sometimes seems so limited, I have always had an attitude when it comes to my perceptions of other peoples' intelligence. I am immediatly annoyed by those I perceive to be below my intellectual level. Yet deep inside I know that my intellectual level is not so high. I constantly meet people who are probably smarter than me but I seem unable to believe it because often very smart people are not very polished in physical presentation, nor in verbiage. Though I have to point out here that I tend to think of "smart" people as those who are skilled in math and the sciences as I have no idea what the hell those people are talking about most of the time and so they seem like they have brains that work better than mine. At the same time I find them to be socially inept and look down on them anyway.
Then there's also this testing problem I seem to have developed around eleventh grade - you know - when standardized tests actually seem to matter. I had always done pretty well on them and then boom - I was statistically retarded. Was I simply psyching myself out? Did I have a brain aneurysm in my sleep which killed a bunch of my smart cells? Am I an idiot for thinking that an aneurysm could have done that? Do I want to do the research involved to find out? Is my increasing laziness a symptom of my decreasing perspicacity? Am I being pretentious when I use words like 'perspicacity'? Does that word even exist? Do you think I'm even interested in finding out? Maybe. I like words. I'm not always sure how to use them but I like to try.
I've always liked words and sentences and how things sound and look. I assume that there is some kind of nearly useless intelligence there but sadly we live in a world that values test scores and statistics. I find that to be very annoying and it forces me to concluded that we live in a world run by idiots - even if they are good at math and scored 1300 or more on their SATs.
What really pisses me off is that those bastards are getting all the high-paying jobs.
Tuesday, July 18, 2006
Live Slow, Die Old
I think this is a much better way to live. So far that's the way things are going for me and I'm pretty happy with it.
I hope to be about 99 before I die. I like the number 99.
That chick on Get Smart was pretty hot.
Skinny but hot.
Yeah. I'll take my time dying. Chillin'. Livin'. Tuning in to what it be. Hopefully.
I hope to be about 99 before I die. I like the number 99.
That chick on Get Smart was pretty hot.
Skinny but hot.
Yeah. I'll take my time dying. Chillin'. Livin'. Tuning in to what it be. Hopefully.
Saturday, July 15, 2006
A Boy Without a Name
For the first 95% of my life on this earth, I was officially nameless. I have always had a last name though. Let's say it's STANK.
Why, you ask?
Because my parents, yet again, were trying to prove they were crazy.
Even from birth, I was being given the signals.
So, the story goes like this. My mother doesn't like my father's name. Let's call him, Excretious. And, Excretious didn't realize that Excretious was a horrible name in this country. He therefore insisted that his last born son (they knew I'd be the last born as six was more than enough) be named with his beautiful name.
To add strength to my fathers argument was the fact that my sister Jaqui was named after my mother. So this was not only about sharing a super-fantastic name like Excretious with my father but also balancing out the family with a mother-daughter/father-son same-name situation.
Of course after months of arguing about naming me before I was even born, my mother decided to do what women do best and manipulate things by giving in until the real time came. She told my dad, "Okay. Excretious is a terrible name but I will punish my unborn child for the duration of his life by naming him after you because it will make you happy."
"Thank you.", my dad said in reply.
So mom proceeded to pray nightly, daily and afternoonly for a girl. "He can't expect me to name a girl, Excretious."
Maybe Excretiella?
Then that fateful day in February came, after she'd endured the fall on the ice in the blizzard as well as some balloon-hat ridicule (which I will get into another time if I feel like it) she was rushed to the hostpital to deliver a bouncing ten-pound baby boy who was doomed to be called Excretious.
Now most people don't get to hear much about how their mother reacted when they were born. You generally assume you were met with tears of joy - at least by your mother - when you were first introduced to the world. I, however, have always known that I was met with an "oh shit, it's a boy!" followed by genuine tears of deep depression.
The nurse came to my mothers room with the birth-certificate forms and my mother filled out everything except the name. She told the nurse she needed more time to discuss it with her husband who was having a mid-life crisis and was unable to make clear decisions easily.
She went home and talked it over with my older siblings who proved to be on my mother's side. They all then conspired to call me EJ. The story would go like this: I was Excretious Jackson and my father was Excretious too, so why not make it easier on everyone and call me EJ for short to avoid any misunderstandings that might happen. You know, when my father calls my mother from work to say he's going to be late because he's having drinks at a titty bar with some of his construction buddies. It might be confusing if the messenger said, "Excretious will be late for dinner because he's at a titty bar getting drunk with his friends." This way, she and all my siblings would know that it was my father and not I that was engaged in this activity. Likewise, when someone said, "Excretious just puked all over my back" there might be some confusion lest we differentiate Excretious Sr. from EJ.
My father reluctantly agreed. He never argued about the fact that my sister Jaqui and my mother seemed to exist quite comfortably carrying exactly the same first, middle and last names and that the children never referred to either of my parents by first names so confusion never really came about.
More than thirty years later, I still had no name on that damn birth certificate. I liked it that way. I felt like Sting...only I was Stank.
Why, you ask?
Because my parents, yet again, were trying to prove they were crazy.
Even from birth, I was being given the signals.
So, the story goes like this. My mother doesn't like my father's name. Let's call him, Excretious. And, Excretious didn't realize that Excretious was a horrible name in this country. He therefore insisted that his last born son (they knew I'd be the last born as six was more than enough) be named with his beautiful name.
To add strength to my fathers argument was the fact that my sister Jaqui was named after my mother. So this was not only about sharing a super-fantastic name like Excretious with my father but also balancing out the family with a mother-daughter/father-son same-name situation.
Of course after months of arguing about naming me before I was even born, my mother decided to do what women do best and manipulate things by giving in until the real time came. She told my dad, "Okay. Excretious is a terrible name but I will punish my unborn child for the duration of his life by naming him after you because it will make you happy."
"Thank you.", my dad said in reply.
So mom proceeded to pray nightly, daily and afternoonly for a girl. "He can't expect me to name a girl, Excretious."
Maybe Excretiella?
Then that fateful day in February came, after she'd endured the fall on the ice in the blizzard as well as some balloon-hat ridicule (which I will get into another time if I feel like it) she was rushed to the hostpital to deliver a bouncing ten-pound baby boy who was doomed to be called Excretious.
Now most people don't get to hear much about how their mother reacted when they were born. You generally assume you were met with tears of joy - at least by your mother - when you were first introduced to the world. I, however, have always known that I was met with an "oh shit, it's a boy!" followed by genuine tears of deep depression.
The nurse came to my mothers room with the birth-certificate forms and my mother filled out everything except the name. She told the nurse she needed more time to discuss it with her husband who was having a mid-life crisis and was unable to make clear decisions easily.
She went home and talked it over with my older siblings who proved to be on my mother's side. They all then conspired to call me EJ. The story would go like this: I was Excretious Jackson and my father was Excretious too, so why not make it easier on everyone and call me EJ for short to avoid any misunderstandings that might happen. You know, when my father calls my mother from work to say he's going to be late because he's having drinks at a titty bar with some of his construction buddies. It might be confusing if the messenger said, "Excretious will be late for dinner because he's at a titty bar getting drunk with his friends." This way, she and all my siblings would know that it was my father and not I that was engaged in this activity. Likewise, when someone said, "Excretious just puked all over my back" there might be some confusion lest we differentiate Excretious Sr. from EJ.
My father reluctantly agreed. He never argued about the fact that my sister Jaqui and my mother seemed to exist quite comfortably carrying exactly the same first, middle and last names and that the children never referred to either of my parents by first names so confusion never really came about.
More than thirty years later, I still had no name on that damn birth certificate. I liked it that way. I felt like Sting...only I was Stank.
Thursday, July 06, 2006
Career Choices & The Joys of Mental Illness
So, I've been officially diagnosed with ADHD. The psychologist says it's more A than H but "mixed". That's fine and dandy. I was expecting it. But I was also diagnosed (accidentally) with a fairly high level of anxiety disorder as well. The worst part is I don't think of myself as anxious, but apparently the experts agree that I am and I have no say in it.
Not only that, but, as I could have guessed, I might also have a form of narcolepsy. Now I can tell my father and make him feel guilty for torturing me when I couldn't get up all those mornings years ago. He probably won't feel guilty though. That's one of the benefits of being Estonian.
At least now I know what has been wrong with me my whole life. I know some will brush this off as an excuse for my lack of progress, but at least now I have some idea about why I've been such a freak all my life.
Most kids, by the time they're six years old, have an idea that they want to be firemen, baseball players, coat-checkers - whatever. I, however, wasn't sure about what I wanted to do with my life until I was nearly ten. I know, that's a dangerously long time to go without starting on a career path, but I have always been slow. I've mentioned this several times. I hope I don't have to say it again.
The idea of being a vet came to me while on one of those drives to Westchester with my sisters or my father - I don't remember who it was because I was too busy looking out of the window. I was, as usual, scanning the sides of the highway for dead animals.
I used to tell myself, "Don't look out of the windows. You'll just see another dead dog or deer or turkey and feel sad for the rest of the day!", but I always looked anyway.
On nearly every ride north, there were at least three dead animals on the way to wherever we were going. Usually it started with a dead dog. Sometimes there might have been a few dead cats and squirrels but I had never liked them and so I didn't notice. The dead dogs, however, were another matter entirely. I was immediately stricken with thoughts of the dead dog's family and questions about his life with them.
Did they have a son in the family who loved that dog as much as I had loved my dogs? Did the dog go for a walk and never come back? Is the hopeless family going through pain, waiting for Fido to come home? Does Fido have a soul? Is he just a lump of dead meat or will he go to doggy heaven? If I go to heaven and my dog goes to doggy heaven, can he come and live with me or can I just visit him from time to time? Are there limits to how many times I can visit? What if there's a doggy hell? Can I visit him there? What if I'm in hell and he's in heaven? Can I see him? Can he come to me? Do they deliver in heaven? I guess hell would only deliver Dominoes and I could see myself getting really sick of that.
(Well, you see how the unselfish thoughts of concern for the dog's family quickly came back to me.)
On one of these trips, I decided I would help and save these poor dead animals. I'd become a veterinarian and bring them back to life! I'd be like Franken-Vet and bring happiness to all those in the world who'd lost their loved-pets! What a samaritan.
I was pretty sure of my calling for several years. Then my dog, Cheeks, got constipated. We took her to the vet and as usual, I liked to sit in on the examination process to see how the doctor did his thing. So, we told Dr. Scheiz that Cheeks hadn't had a bowel movement in over a week and that she seemed pretty upset about it. He immediatly put her up on his exam table and put on a rubber glove. I was young, but I had a pretty good idea that the rubber glove thing was not usual. However, I was not at all prepared for what would come next.
I remember Cheeks' face as the doctor lifted her tail. She was facing me and looking really pissed. Her nose started to flair and she stiffened up as the doctor stuck his right index finger right between Cheeks' cheeks and WHAM! POP! The crap just shot out of her little dog ass in all directions, onto the calm but disgusted face of Dr. Scheiz and the horrified face of his assistant. Up until that point, she had been all smiles but the assistant looked pretty grossed out now that her face was covered in doggy diarrhea. "There we go!", said the doctor. "She should be all better". It was kind of like there was giant bubble in there keeping her from passing the feces", he told us.
"Eww" - is all I could think. I was just imagining this huge chocolate-colored bubble of shit inside my little dog's ass and then the doctor's finger puncturing it and creating this giant explosion of hershey-squirt that nearly hit the ceiling and all four walls in his office.
I had to search for a new career. There was no way I was going to stick my finger in any dog's ass. Not even my dog's.
Not only that, but, as I could have guessed, I might also have a form of narcolepsy. Now I can tell my father and make him feel guilty for torturing me when I couldn't get up all those mornings years ago. He probably won't feel guilty though. That's one of the benefits of being Estonian.
At least now I know what has been wrong with me my whole life. I know some will brush this off as an excuse for my lack of progress, but at least now I have some idea about why I've been such a freak all my life.
Most kids, by the time they're six years old, have an idea that they want to be firemen, baseball players, coat-checkers - whatever. I, however, wasn't sure about what I wanted to do with my life until I was nearly ten. I know, that's a dangerously long time to go without starting on a career path, but I have always been slow. I've mentioned this several times. I hope I don't have to say it again.
The idea of being a vet came to me while on one of those drives to Westchester with my sisters or my father - I don't remember who it was because I was too busy looking out of the window. I was, as usual, scanning the sides of the highway for dead animals.
I used to tell myself, "Don't look out of the windows. You'll just see another dead dog or deer or turkey and feel sad for the rest of the day!", but I always looked anyway.
On nearly every ride north, there were at least three dead animals on the way to wherever we were going. Usually it started with a dead dog. Sometimes there might have been a few dead cats and squirrels but I had never liked them and so I didn't notice. The dead dogs, however, were another matter entirely. I was immediately stricken with thoughts of the dead dog's family and questions about his life with them.
Did they have a son in the family who loved that dog as much as I had loved my dogs? Did the dog go for a walk and never come back? Is the hopeless family going through pain, waiting for Fido to come home? Does Fido have a soul? Is he just a lump of dead meat or will he go to doggy heaven? If I go to heaven and my dog goes to doggy heaven, can he come and live with me or can I just visit him from time to time? Are there limits to how many times I can visit? What if there's a doggy hell? Can I visit him there? What if I'm in hell and he's in heaven? Can I see him? Can he come to me? Do they deliver in heaven? I guess hell would only deliver Dominoes and I could see myself getting really sick of that.
(Well, you see how the unselfish thoughts of concern for the dog's family quickly came back to me.)
On one of these trips, I decided I would help and save these poor dead animals. I'd become a veterinarian and bring them back to life! I'd be like Franken-Vet and bring happiness to all those in the world who'd lost their loved-pets! What a samaritan.
I was pretty sure of my calling for several years. Then my dog, Cheeks, got constipated. We took her to the vet and as usual, I liked to sit in on the examination process to see how the doctor did his thing. So, we told Dr. Scheiz that Cheeks hadn't had a bowel movement in over a week and that she seemed pretty upset about it. He immediatly put her up on his exam table and put on a rubber glove. I was young, but I had a pretty good idea that the rubber glove thing was not usual. However, I was not at all prepared for what would come next.
I remember Cheeks' face as the doctor lifted her tail. She was facing me and looking really pissed. Her nose started to flair and she stiffened up as the doctor stuck his right index finger right between Cheeks' cheeks and WHAM! POP! The crap just shot out of her little dog ass in all directions, onto the calm but disgusted face of Dr. Scheiz and the horrified face of his assistant. Up until that point, she had been all smiles but the assistant looked pretty grossed out now that her face was covered in doggy diarrhea. "There we go!", said the doctor. "She should be all better". It was kind of like there was giant bubble in there keeping her from passing the feces", he told us.
"Eww" - is all I could think. I was just imagining this huge chocolate-colored bubble of shit inside my little dog's ass and then the doctor's finger puncturing it and creating this giant explosion of hershey-squirt that nearly hit the ceiling and all four walls in his office.
I had to search for a new career. There was no way I was going to stick my finger in any dog's ass. Not even my dog's.
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
Slow Learner
My first trip to Europe happened when I was just a wee lad. I went to Sweden to visit my father's relatives and to witness the great spectacle that was Esto 80. I had been to Esto 76 but was too young to remember anything except that it was kind of boring. This Esto 80 thing was going to be a little different. This time I was going to Stockholm, Sweden instead of Baltimore, Maryland.
The travel bug had bitten me ever since our family took a trip to exotic Disney World when I was four years old. Those flying Dumbo elephants helped me to realize that the world was full of unexpected pleasures waiting to be discovered. I couldn't wait to get on a real plane and not just a flying elephant that went in circles.
So, I got on Northwest Orient flight somethingorother on a sunny Saturday morning in July of 1980 and was as excited as a tourist in Times Square. Here we were - me, my parents and my sister, Minerva - off to exotic Sweden! (I am not sure if I have used "Minerva" as my youngest sister's alias before, but anyway, it's the youngest one - still much older than me.) I had met several of my Swedish-Estonian relatives a couple of years before when they came to New York to discover my family. They were all a little nutty, so we all got along very excellently. I remember my cousin Lailai had a penny rocket shot up her dress on the fourth of July and she just seemed to enjoy the heck out of that. That was cool.
So, I was very excited about this trip, yada yada yada. I get on the plane and find that the seats are broken into groups of two or three. Two on the left, three in the middle and two on the right. So, naturally this was going to cause me some amount of stress because my mother would probably have to sit next to my father and I would be stuck with Minerva.
There was some discussion about me sitting with my father but I would hear none of it because my father was a chronic nose wiper/picker and I just couldn't sit through 8 hours of that. This was my first intercontinental flight for Christmas sake! It had to be at least somewhat pleasant! So, I sat next to Minerva who was expectedly quiet. Minerva had lived in France the year before. She was an exchange student and to me seemed very worldy so I spent most of the first two hours of the flight asking her questions about airplanes: the food, the takeoff, how such a heavy thing got off the ground, etc. She didn't know the answers, but that was fine. I just liked hearing myself ask the questions. The answers were (and usually still are) secondary.
So, the flight is going fine except for the excruciating pain I feel in my ears. I thought my head was going to explode for the first twenty minutes of the flight. Then that kind of went away and I yaked at Minerva for however long until dinner was served.
During our gourmet in-flight meal of crap-covered feaux chicken with grease-engorged rice substitute and "caviar", Minerva got some of the "caviar" stuff on her hands and had to use up the toilet-tissue style napkin to wipe it off. Then she had no napkin and she looked at me and asked, "E, do you have an extra napkin?".
I knew I didn't have one. But for some reason, I started feeling the sides of my legs and digging into the crevices of the seat to find one. I looked under the food tray, between the plastic dishes dividing the "caviar" and the chicken stuff from the chocolate-mangoesqu cake-like thing and still I found no "extra" napkin.
I felt awful. Minerva was very sweet and deserved an extra napkin but I couldn't provide it.
"No. I don't have one", I finally answered.
Poor Minerva looked so disappointed. I started to realize then that when she said "Do you have an extra" she really meant, "give me yours because you're a little boy and you don't really care if you have a napkin or not". I guess Minerva didn't understand exactly who I was and that this was my first real airplane ride and that that napkin was MY FIRST AIRPLANE NAPKIN and I had every intention of using it to wipe the grease from MY CHICKEN STUFF off my mouth.
I did feel for her though. I thought I might go to the loo and bring back Minerva some toilet paper. I didn't have to go, but it would be an adventure, I thought. I'd like to see how the bathroom works in a plane and see if the pee and poop really fly out of a trap door when you flush. (That's how I'd imagined it worked anyway.)
So, off I went to the bathroom. I didn't have to wait on line as it was still dinner time and most people were still eating. I entered the tiny restroom, closed the accordian door and studied the handle. The light was not on and I was apparently doing something wrong. After a few seconds, I had it figured out, the lights came on, I turned around, did my business and turned to the sink to wash my hands. My hands were wet and I needed a towel to dry them. Guess what? They had a whole paper towel dispenser right there in the loo! I was impressed. But I said to myself, "this paper towel is kind of dry and hard. It's not good for Minerva. She needs to wipe her mouth and this will be too rough." Just was I was thinking that my right eye caught sight of the most amazing thing I had ever seen. It was like God Himself had been listening to my thoughts and was answering my prayers tenfold!
"EJ. I knoweth that it is thy intention to bring forth to thine sister - fruit of thine mother's womb, flesh of your flesh - a napkin so that she may wipe the muck from her brow and feel the glory of a clean face!"
Yes, God, I thought. That's exactly what I want to do.
There in front of me, just above eye level, was a great dispenser with an embossed label which read, "SANITARY NAPKINS".
"Wow", I thought, "these aren't just regular napkins, they're extra clean! Minerva will love these!"
So, I yanked on the plastic covered napkins sticking out of the bottom of the dispenser and took a long, hard look at it.
"That's amazing! It's a whole package of napkins! Minerva can wipe her face till the cows come home!"
So, I took the napkins in hand and left the restroom. I was so proud of my discovery and so sure that Minerva was going to be completely exstatic when she saw this that I held the napkin package up high while walking down the aisle through the plane back to my seat.
I got back in my seat and looked over at Minerva who was still eating and seemed really out of sorts due to her lack of a napkin. I looked at her with a great expression of self-satisfaction and handed her the package and said, "I got you some napkins from the bathroom. They had whole packages in there!"
Minerva then turned a bright red, clenched her lips together and snatched the package of napkins out of my hand, opened her purse and stuffed them inside.
She then started stuffing her food into her mouth, emptied all the little plastic dividers and didn't speak to me for the rest of the ride.
I knew I had done something wrong. But I didn't know what it was until maybe eight years later when I was in Australia for another Esto festival and Minerva corrected my mistake when I asked the server in a Melbourne Pizza Hut for a "napkin" and she gave me the dirtiest look.
"Oh! I get it now."
The travel bug had bitten me ever since our family took a trip to exotic Disney World when I was four years old. Those flying Dumbo elephants helped me to realize that the world was full of unexpected pleasures waiting to be discovered. I couldn't wait to get on a real plane and not just a flying elephant that went in circles.
So, I got on Northwest Orient flight somethingorother on a sunny Saturday morning in July of 1980 and was as excited as a tourist in Times Square. Here we were - me, my parents and my sister, Minerva - off to exotic Sweden! (I am not sure if I have used "Minerva" as my youngest sister's alias before, but anyway, it's the youngest one - still much older than me.) I had met several of my Swedish-Estonian relatives a couple of years before when they came to New York to discover my family. They were all a little nutty, so we all got along very excellently. I remember my cousin Lailai had a penny rocket shot up her dress on the fourth of July and she just seemed to enjoy the heck out of that. That was cool.
So, I was very excited about this trip, yada yada yada. I get on the plane and find that the seats are broken into groups of two or three. Two on the left, three in the middle and two on the right. So, naturally this was going to cause me some amount of stress because my mother would probably have to sit next to my father and I would be stuck with Minerva.
There was some discussion about me sitting with my father but I would hear none of it because my father was a chronic nose wiper/picker and I just couldn't sit through 8 hours of that. This was my first intercontinental flight for Christmas sake! It had to be at least somewhat pleasant! So, I sat next to Minerva who was expectedly quiet. Minerva had lived in France the year before. She was an exchange student and to me seemed very worldy so I spent most of the first two hours of the flight asking her questions about airplanes: the food, the takeoff, how such a heavy thing got off the ground, etc. She didn't know the answers, but that was fine. I just liked hearing myself ask the questions. The answers were (and usually still are) secondary.
So, the flight is going fine except for the excruciating pain I feel in my ears. I thought my head was going to explode for the first twenty minutes of the flight. Then that kind of went away and I yaked at Minerva for however long until dinner was served.
During our gourmet in-flight meal of crap-covered feaux chicken with grease-engorged rice substitute and "caviar", Minerva got some of the "caviar" stuff on her hands and had to use up the toilet-tissue style napkin to wipe it off. Then she had no napkin and she looked at me and asked, "E, do you have an extra napkin?".
I knew I didn't have one. But for some reason, I started feeling the sides of my legs and digging into the crevices of the seat to find one. I looked under the food tray, between the plastic dishes dividing the "caviar" and the chicken stuff from the chocolate-mangoesqu cake-like thing and still I found no "extra" napkin.
I felt awful. Minerva was very sweet and deserved an extra napkin but I couldn't provide it.
"No. I don't have one", I finally answered.
Poor Minerva looked so disappointed. I started to realize then that when she said "Do you have an extra" she really meant, "give me yours because you're a little boy and you don't really care if you have a napkin or not". I guess Minerva didn't understand exactly who I was and that this was my first real airplane ride and that that napkin was MY FIRST AIRPLANE NAPKIN and I had every intention of using it to wipe the grease from MY CHICKEN STUFF off my mouth.
I did feel for her though. I thought I might go to the loo and bring back Minerva some toilet paper. I didn't have to go, but it would be an adventure, I thought. I'd like to see how the bathroom works in a plane and see if the pee and poop really fly out of a trap door when you flush. (That's how I'd imagined it worked anyway.)
So, off I went to the bathroom. I didn't have to wait on line as it was still dinner time and most people were still eating. I entered the tiny restroom, closed the accordian door and studied the handle. The light was not on and I was apparently doing something wrong. After a few seconds, I had it figured out, the lights came on, I turned around, did my business and turned to the sink to wash my hands. My hands were wet and I needed a towel to dry them. Guess what? They had a whole paper towel dispenser right there in the loo! I was impressed. But I said to myself, "this paper towel is kind of dry and hard. It's not good for Minerva. She needs to wipe her mouth and this will be too rough." Just was I was thinking that my right eye caught sight of the most amazing thing I had ever seen. It was like God Himself had been listening to my thoughts and was answering my prayers tenfold!
"EJ. I knoweth that it is thy intention to bring forth to thine sister - fruit of thine mother's womb, flesh of your flesh - a napkin so that she may wipe the muck from her brow and feel the glory of a clean face!"
Yes, God, I thought. That's exactly what I want to do.
There in front of me, just above eye level, was a great dispenser with an embossed label which read, "SANITARY NAPKINS".
"Wow", I thought, "these aren't just regular napkins, they're extra clean! Minerva will love these!"
So, I yanked on the plastic covered napkins sticking out of the bottom of the dispenser and took a long, hard look at it.
"That's amazing! It's a whole package of napkins! Minerva can wipe her face till the cows come home!"
So, I took the napkins in hand and left the restroom. I was so proud of my discovery and so sure that Minerva was going to be completely exstatic when she saw this that I held the napkin package up high while walking down the aisle through the plane back to my seat.
I got back in my seat and looked over at Minerva who was still eating and seemed really out of sorts due to her lack of a napkin. I looked at her with a great expression of self-satisfaction and handed her the package and said, "I got you some napkins from the bathroom. They had whole packages in there!"
Minerva then turned a bright red, clenched her lips together and snatched the package of napkins out of my hand, opened her purse and stuffed them inside.
She then started stuffing her food into her mouth, emptied all the little plastic dividers and didn't speak to me for the rest of the ride.
I knew I had done something wrong. But I didn't know what it was until maybe eight years later when I was in Australia for another Esto festival and Minerva corrected my mistake when I asked the server in a Melbourne Pizza Hut for a "napkin" and she gave me the dirtiest look.
"Oh! I get it now."
Monday, June 26, 2006
Drunk and Debauched
Most of my bloggings are written while drunk - not necessarily me, but the readers.
No, really, I am actually a little drunk when I write these things. I find that a little buzz frees me from the constraints of propriety - not that I usually feel too constrained to begin with. Today, however, I am sober as a Muslim during Ramadan.
As a kid I was so incredibly repressed when it came to saying what I wanted to say. I was always dying to blurt out something really really inappropriate and on the few occasions when I did that, my mother was ready to swat me like a fly. If you've kept up with these blogs, you know some examples of my fitful malefactions (the underwear "gift", the Lacoste giveaway) which caused my mother so much grief.
Despite the all-encompassing nature of my mothers efforts to repress me, I have never, in my adult life, found it all that hard to avoid a full-on rebellion against her way of thinking. Instead, I have maintainted a mildly rebellious nature throughout most of my life, doing little things to annoy her conservative sensibilities.
I never became a drug addict or worse - goth, although I came close a few times. I have never solicited prostitutes or become an abusive alcoholic. I have never killed anyone, nor have I killed their pets. These are all things that would probably bother my mother a lot.
I know she really hates when people curse. My brother Aldo, who is an abusive alcoholic drug addict and I think he probably has killed some pets, can do all sorts of really bad things for which he should be (and has been) arrested, but my mother seems to get most upset when he uses dirty words.
"It's the drink that makes him talk like that!"
"Ma, he killed the neighbor's cat with a shovel!"
"I know! It's awful. But, you know, I think I heard him say 'F' when he was doing it! Why does he have to use that filthy language? I mean, does it make him feel better when he is killing the cat? Why is that necessary?"
I, myself, have never used the type of language Aldo uses in front of my mother. However, as I get older I have gradually come to the point where I will say the words: ''bitch'', ''bastard'' and ''hell'' in front of my mother. Every time I use them she makes a face.
The odd thing is that she has always just gotten the biggest thrill of her day when using almost any phrase with the word "ass" in it: STUPID ASS, DUMB ASS, PAIN IN THE ASS, ASS ACHE, KISS MY ASS, YOU'RE AN ASS. I think she tells herself it's OK because she's using the word "ass" as "donkey" which is the same thing. But we all know she's not thinking "donkey" when she says it.
To her credit, I suppose, she never uses the terms: ASSHOLE, ASSWIPE or FATASS.
I use those terms frequently. I like the way they sound.
My mother did actually use the word "Asshole" once - to my knowledge.
I was 13 and attending the 7th grade at St. Benedict's Academy and one day, during a family party, my mother repeated a joke she'd heard at work (where the other women used to "talk about diddle doos and use all kinds of filthy words") in which the word "asshole" was the punchline.
I was upstairs listening to the joke and thought it was a good one and wanted to tell my best friend, Denny. Denny had always thought I was a freak because I didn't curse, so now that I'd heard my mother curse, and since it was told in such an innocent and funny way, I figured God might not kill me for saying, asshole.
So, the next day after school, (I couldn't actually tell the joke IN school because one of the nuns might hear it and expel me) on the way to the Video Hut to play Donkey Kong with Denny, I told him I had heard a really funny joke and I started to tell him.
I still remember the way I felt when I told the joke. I had almost put myself out of my body in case God struck me dead and my soul would be able to escape my body and take over someone elses in an instant. Denny didn't flinch when I told the joke. I had been thinking, he's gonna notice that I am saying a dirty word and he's never heard me say one before. But the dirty word came at the end and, while I nearly had an aneurysm at the exact moment the word, "asshole" came out of my mouth, Denny barely seemed to notice! What's worse, his reaction to the joke was kind of tepid. He laughed but it wasn't so big. I was expecting roars. I mean, it was almost like giving up my virginity - saying this word! Up until then I had had a perfect record! My fan was nearly rusted solid from not turning for thirteen years! Now I had moved it. It turned once and was well on it's way to becoming an air conditioner for the angels.
Well, that was the beginning of my demise. Since then, things have just gone to hell and I no longer have a chance at not decomposing when I die.
So sad.
No, really, I am actually a little drunk when I write these things. I find that a little buzz frees me from the constraints of propriety - not that I usually feel too constrained to begin with. Today, however, I am sober as a Muslim during Ramadan.
As a kid I was so incredibly repressed when it came to saying what I wanted to say. I was always dying to blurt out something really really inappropriate and on the few occasions when I did that, my mother was ready to swat me like a fly. If you've kept up with these blogs, you know some examples of my fitful malefactions (the underwear "gift", the Lacoste giveaway) which caused my mother so much grief.
Despite the all-encompassing nature of my mothers efforts to repress me, I have never, in my adult life, found it all that hard to avoid a full-on rebellion against her way of thinking. Instead, I have maintainted a mildly rebellious nature throughout most of my life, doing little things to annoy her conservative sensibilities.
I never became a drug addict or worse - goth, although I came close a few times. I have never solicited prostitutes or become an abusive alcoholic. I have never killed anyone, nor have I killed their pets. These are all things that would probably bother my mother a lot.
I know she really hates when people curse. My brother Aldo, who is an abusive alcoholic drug addict and I think he probably has killed some pets, can do all sorts of really bad things for which he should be (and has been) arrested, but my mother seems to get most upset when he uses dirty words.
"It's the drink that makes him talk like that!"
"Ma, he killed the neighbor's cat with a shovel!"
"I know! It's awful. But, you know, I think I heard him say 'F' when he was doing it! Why does he have to use that filthy language? I mean, does it make him feel better when he is killing the cat? Why is that necessary?"
I, myself, have never used the type of language Aldo uses in front of my mother. However, as I get older I have gradually come to the point where I will say the words: ''bitch'', ''bastard'' and ''hell'' in front of my mother. Every time I use them she makes a face.
The odd thing is that she has always just gotten the biggest thrill of her day when using almost any phrase with the word "ass" in it: STUPID ASS, DUMB ASS, PAIN IN THE ASS, ASS ACHE, KISS MY ASS, YOU'RE AN ASS. I think she tells herself it's OK because she's using the word "ass" as "donkey" which is the same thing. But we all know she's not thinking "donkey" when she says it.
To her credit, I suppose, she never uses the terms: ASSHOLE, ASSWIPE or FATASS.
I use those terms frequently. I like the way they sound.
My mother did actually use the word "Asshole" once - to my knowledge.
I was 13 and attending the 7th grade at St. Benedict's Academy and one day, during a family party, my mother repeated a joke she'd heard at work (where the other women used to "talk about diddle doos and use all kinds of filthy words") in which the word "asshole" was the punchline.
I was upstairs listening to the joke and thought it was a good one and wanted to tell my best friend, Denny. Denny had always thought I was a freak because I didn't curse, so now that I'd heard my mother curse, and since it was told in such an innocent and funny way, I figured God might not kill me for saying, asshole.
So, the next day after school, (I couldn't actually tell the joke IN school because one of the nuns might hear it and expel me) on the way to the Video Hut to play Donkey Kong with Denny, I told him I had heard a really funny joke and I started to tell him.
I still remember the way I felt when I told the joke. I had almost put myself out of my body in case God struck me dead and my soul would be able to escape my body and take over someone elses in an instant. Denny didn't flinch when I told the joke. I had been thinking, he's gonna notice that I am saying a dirty word and he's never heard me say one before. But the dirty word came at the end and, while I nearly had an aneurysm at the exact moment the word, "asshole" came out of my mouth, Denny barely seemed to notice! What's worse, his reaction to the joke was kind of tepid. He laughed but it wasn't so big. I was expecting roars. I mean, it was almost like giving up my virginity - saying this word! Up until then I had had a perfect record! My fan was nearly rusted solid from not turning for thirteen years! Now I had moved it. It turned once and was well on it's way to becoming an air conditioner for the angels.
Well, that was the beginning of my demise. Since then, things have just gone to hell and I no longer have a chance at not decomposing when I die.
So sad.
Tuesday, June 20, 2006
Narcolepsy
Okay, so I have never been diagnosed with narcolepsy but it IS one of the many many diseases that I wish I had so that I can divert the blame for my laziness away from my self and toward a tragic birth defect.
But then again, who knows. I, like most people, LOVE to sleep. Maybe the fact that I love to sleep is what keeps me from hearing alarms, explosions, earthquakes, etc. - while sleeping. OR, maybe I suffer from some form of narcolepsy that puts me into a deep, hypnotic sleep and which makes it nearly impossible for me to wake up in the morning.
As an adult, I have managed this problem by simply having a radio go off at 6, a CD-clock go off at 6:30, a traditional beep alarm go off at 7 and a wake-up call at 7:15 to help me get going. That still doesn't work, but sometimes.
Now that I'm analyzing myself here, I do think it's possible that one of the reasons I have trouble waking up is that I associate waking up with trauma. My body and mind know that waking up is a horrific experience and so, they choose to shut down. But more on that later.
I hope I never go into a coma. I'd be totally healthy and not want to wake up out of a combination of fear and laziness.
Almost as soon as I started to HAVE to get up for school, I had trouble doing it. My mother had always encouraged me to stay up as long as I wanted. She liked to force-feed me ice pops and keep me next to her while she watched horror movies. We had to keep the sound down to an almost inaudible murmur so that "daddy won't wake up". Of course "daddy" did wake up every hour or so to go pee and complain in a much more audible tone while heading for the loo.
"Gosh damn TV going all night. No wonder nobody wakes up in this house."
He'd say that same thing every night that Mom was home.
(Some days she worked through the night and I would have to lay in bed alone, trying not to imagine that demons were in the attic above my bed trying to dig through the ceiling so they could eat me alive.)
So, when the horror films from "Chiller Theater" were over, I would finally go to bed. On Sunday nights, when Mom was always home, I would usually go to bed well past midnight and have to wake up at 6:30 to get ready for school and be there by 7:30.
I pretty much never woke up before 7 though.
Most Monday mornings were the same in my early school years. Aldo's alarm would begin to ring at 6:30. He didn't have to be up until 7 but since he had pretty much the same problems I had with sleep, he didn't hear it either.
I vaguely recall hearing my father washing his face in the morning. It was always a rather noisy affair - much louder than the alarms - even my Raggedy Ann N' Andy Alarm, which was hands-down the most annoying alarm ever. I had a girl cousin who loved Raggedy Ann and so, naturally, she and her mother thought it would be appropriate to buy an alarm clock for me featuring Raggedy Ann and her equally unattractive and retarded brother, Andy. (Andy was basically Raggedy Ann's producers trying to open the boy market for their extremely-annoying-doll business.) So, my cousin bought me this clock, which I think was actually supposed to be annoying because by the time I was 4 years old, it was pretty clear that I liked sleep a little too much and my extended family had heard about this - including my cousin. The clock used the voices of two really annoying kids to SHOUT every morning, something like this: "Andy Andy, Please get up. You must be on your way! So, brush your teeth and comb your hair and start your happy day!" Then it would repeat until you started your happy friggin' day. I guess that alarm actually didn't last so long. I think about one month after I got it, I found it in my backyard smashed to bits. I heard Aldo later brag to his friends that he'd, "helped Raggedy Ann and her stupid brother die". I guess it was kind of harsh, but I apparently didn't hear the damn thing anyway so it was no loss to me at all.
So, back to my father and his morning routine.
For some reason, even though I had this love for sleep, my father NEEDED to come into my room before the alarm clock rang and say, "KIDS! UP! SCHOOL!" and then go to the bathroom to do whatever he did in there. I am still not sure what it was, but it apparently involved a lot of water because the bathroom was always very wet when I had to use it, and it smelled like Aquavelva had been splashed into every corner of the room.
Needless to say, I never got up when my father preceeded the alarms. All those pre-show warnings just put a deeper, sleep-inducing fear into me so that by the time I felt my father's rough hand yanking my ankle I only had about a milisecond to drop my hands to the floor to avoid getting a cuncussion. I remember feeling the seams in the hardwood floor scratching against the skin of my back as my pajamas rode up during the dragging process. But this wasn't the worst part. I was always basically still partially asleep when the dragging happened. It wasn't until we got to the bathroom across the hall that things got really scary.
Lying on the carpeted hallway floor, I was fairly comfortable and could just start to feel the sleep seeping back into my body when Dad would lift me up by the pajama collar, or the seat of my pants (which always gave me an annoying wedgie), pull me into the bathroom, turn on the cold water in the sink full-blast and dip my head over the vanity. He didn't really put my head all the way into the sink. It was too awkward as the sink wasn't that big and even as a child I had a huge head. Anyway, his method was more jarring than mere water-pressure-to-the-face stuff. He took his sand-paper-feeling hands full of freezing cold water and smooshed them into my face so hard, over and over and over until I begged him to stop.
"Okay, okay, Dad!" I'm up, I swear! Stop it. I'll be ready in five minutes." I would always say that and it was never true. The fact is, I would always go back to bed and lie down, thinking to myself that I just needed to rest for ten seconds to recover from the recent trauma and get up and put my uniform on and go to school.
The reality was that I almost always fell asleep for about ten to thirty minutes when my mother would come in the room whispering something about how my father was going to kill me or leave without driving me to school or something. The leaving without driving me was what usually got me going. I didn't want to have to take the bus. I mean, I could sleep on the bus, but I usually overslept on the bus and missed my stop, so it was generally a bad option.
So, I usually opted for suiting up, going outside to my father's truck, in which an enraged Dad had been sitting - engine idling for half-an-hour. I guiltily crawled into the passenger seat, often next to some Irish carpetbagger-construction laborer who smelled like beer farts and said, "quick dad, I'm late!"
"Late because you can't get out of the bed", he'd reply. "In Estonia, we woke up at five o'clock in the morning! We fed the chickens and miked the cows; had breakfast, run around playing with the pigs - like that!"
I just stayed silent as he repeated the same things over again about how in Estonia kids were not so lazy like these Americans here, as if I were some "American" he didn't know and as if I had a house full of farm animals to care for. It was sooooo anoying, but the guilt I felt about being lazy coupled with my tender age, kept me quiet through all those rides to school until I was old enough to drive my self.
When you do things for yourself, you have no one to blame but yourself. It's better that way - at least it is for me.
But then again, who knows. I, like most people, LOVE to sleep. Maybe the fact that I love to sleep is what keeps me from hearing alarms, explosions, earthquakes, etc. - while sleeping. OR, maybe I suffer from some form of narcolepsy that puts me into a deep, hypnotic sleep and which makes it nearly impossible for me to wake up in the morning.
As an adult, I have managed this problem by simply having a radio go off at 6, a CD-clock go off at 6:30, a traditional beep alarm go off at 7 and a wake-up call at 7:15 to help me get going. That still doesn't work, but sometimes.
Now that I'm analyzing myself here, I do think it's possible that one of the reasons I have trouble waking up is that I associate waking up with trauma. My body and mind know that waking up is a horrific experience and so, they choose to shut down. But more on that later.
I hope I never go into a coma. I'd be totally healthy and not want to wake up out of a combination of fear and laziness.
Almost as soon as I started to HAVE to get up for school, I had trouble doing it. My mother had always encouraged me to stay up as long as I wanted. She liked to force-feed me ice pops and keep me next to her while she watched horror movies. We had to keep the sound down to an almost inaudible murmur so that "daddy won't wake up". Of course "daddy" did wake up every hour or so to go pee and complain in a much more audible tone while heading for the loo.
"Gosh damn TV going all night. No wonder nobody wakes up in this house."
He'd say that same thing every night that Mom was home.
(Some days she worked through the night and I would have to lay in bed alone, trying not to imagine that demons were in the attic above my bed trying to dig through the ceiling so they could eat me alive.)
So, when the horror films from "Chiller Theater" were over, I would finally go to bed. On Sunday nights, when Mom was always home, I would usually go to bed well past midnight and have to wake up at 6:30 to get ready for school and be there by 7:30.
I pretty much never woke up before 7 though.
Most Monday mornings were the same in my early school years. Aldo's alarm would begin to ring at 6:30. He didn't have to be up until 7 but since he had pretty much the same problems I had with sleep, he didn't hear it either.
I vaguely recall hearing my father washing his face in the morning. It was always a rather noisy affair - much louder than the alarms - even my Raggedy Ann N' Andy Alarm, which was hands-down the most annoying alarm ever. I had a girl cousin who loved Raggedy Ann and so, naturally, she and her mother thought it would be appropriate to buy an alarm clock for me featuring Raggedy Ann and her equally unattractive and retarded brother, Andy. (Andy was basically Raggedy Ann's producers trying to open the boy market for their extremely-annoying-doll business.) So, my cousin bought me this clock, which I think was actually supposed to be annoying because by the time I was 4 years old, it was pretty clear that I liked sleep a little too much and my extended family had heard about this - including my cousin. The clock used the voices of two really annoying kids to SHOUT every morning, something like this: "Andy Andy, Please get up. You must be on your way! So, brush your teeth and comb your hair and start your happy day!" Then it would repeat until you started your happy friggin' day. I guess that alarm actually didn't last so long. I think about one month after I got it, I found it in my backyard smashed to bits. I heard Aldo later brag to his friends that he'd, "helped Raggedy Ann and her stupid brother die". I guess it was kind of harsh, but I apparently didn't hear the damn thing anyway so it was no loss to me at all.
So, back to my father and his morning routine.
For some reason, even though I had this love for sleep, my father NEEDED to come into my room before the alarm clock rang and say, "KIDS! UP! SCHOOL!" and then go to the bathroom to do whatever he did in there. I am still not sure what it was, but it apparently involved a lot of water because the bathroom was always very wet when I had to use it, and it smelled like Aquavelva had been splashed into every corner of the room.
Needless to say, I never got up when my father preceeded the alarms. All those pre-show warnings just put a deeper, sleep-inducing fear into me so that by the time I felt my father's rough hand yanking my ankle I only had about a milisecond to drop my hands to the floor to avoid getting a cuncussion. I remember feeling the seams in the hardwood floor scratching against the skin of my back as my pajamas rode up during the dragging process. But this wasn't the worst part. I was always basically still partially asleep when the dragging happened. It wasn't until we got to the bathroom across the hall that things got really scary.
Lying on the carpeted hallway floor, I was fairly comfortable and could just start to feel the sleep seeping back into my body when Dad would lift me up by the pajama collar, or the seat of my pants (which always gave me an annoying wedgie), pull me into the bathroom, turn on the cold water in the sink full-blast and dip my head over the vanity. He didn't really put my head all the way into the sink. It was too awkward as the sink wasn't that big and even as a child I had a huge head. Anyway, his method was more jarring than mere water-pressure-to-the-face stuff. He took his sand-paper-feeling hands full of freezing cold water and smooshed them into my face so hard, over and over and over until I begged him to stop.
"Okay, okay, Dad!" I'm up, I swear! Stop it. I'll be ready in five minutes." I would always say that and it was never true. The fact is, I would always go back to bed and lie down, thinking to myself that I just needed to rest for ten seconds to recover from the recent trauma and get up and put my uniform on and go to school.
The reality was that I almost always fell asleep for about ten to thirty minutes when my mother would come in the room whispering something about how my father was going to kill me or leave without driving me to school or something. The leaving without driving me was what usually got me going. I didn't want to have to take the bus. I mean, I could sleep on the bus, but I usually overslept on the bus and missed my stop, so it was generally a bad option.
So, I usually opted for suiting up, going outside to my father's truck, in which an enraged Dad had been sitting - engine idling for half-an-hour. I guiltily crawled into the passenger seat, often next to some Irish carpetbagger-construction laborer who smelled like beer farts and said, "quick dad, I'm late!"
"Late because you can't get out of the bed", he'd reply. "In Estonia, we woke up at five o'clock in the morning! We fed the chickens and miked the cows; had breakfast, run around playing with the pigs - like that!"
I just stayed silent as he repeated the same things over again about how in Estonia kids were not so lazy like these Americans here, as if I were some "American" he didn't know and as if I had a house full of farm animals to care for. It was sooooo anoying, but the guilt I felt about being lazy coupled with my tender age, kept me quiet through all those rides to school until I was old enough to drive my self.
When you do things for yourself, you have no one to blame but yourself. It's better that way - at least it is for me.
Thursday, June 15, 2006
A Boy in a Bubble
About a year ago, I met this manic-looking reject-woman through a friend. She was one of those people that you just look at and immediatly hate. She wasn't attractive in any way, though not homely. She dressed exceptionally poorly though it wasn't like she looked homeless. She also had a way about her that made me want to punch her in the face. And I rarely ever puch strange women in the face.
Anyway, I recall having the misfortune to be invited to lunch with this particularly strange woman. She basically dominated the entire lunch conversation, boring us with the story of her life in what she constantly referred to as "a bubble".
I live in a slightly iffy part of town which hugs East Harlem and so, this woman, who appeared to be about thirty, was apparently just in her early twenties and "scared" to go out at night because Latin men find her "irresistible" and "cat call" her constantly. She was worried that one of these sweaty, hot-blooded "mens" would one day grab her by the neck and force her to do the merengue. I was slightly unsympathetic to this woman, not just because I wanted her to die as soon as possible, but also because she seemed geniunely uncomfortable living in my hood. She lived around the corner and was basically telling me I lived in a shithole neighborhood which didn't sit well with me. I mean, I pay good money to live here and I like it. So, innocently, I asked her why she was so unprepared for life in the big city among various people of color.
Here started the "bubble" references.
"I'm unprepared to live like this because I grew up in a bubble, okay! I had a maid, okay. I had nothing but rich Jewish white people around me all the time. I had friends who played tennis and went to parties at the yacht club on the weekends, okay? I was in this...this...this BUBBLE! Okay!"
So the feeling of common hatred that I felt the second my eyes had met hers was growing into a black rancor that I could amost feel oozing out of my skin. I literally wanted her to have an accident right there in the restaurant. But I remained calm and the venom in my veins slowly cooled to a soft pity. I sensed that she invisioned her life in a bubble as something to be proud of, despite her pretense of shame at living a life of privilege - a life which I still suspect she may or may not have lived. Though the black sheet she was wearing might have come from a very nice store on 34th Street, I didn't notice anyting about her that said, "I'm refined and well-educated. I am too genteel to live in el barrio con los nacos." So, I took her paranoia to be the result of some kind of pseudo-sophisticated delusion.
I know, this is supposed to be all about me and my life, starting from zygotedom, but I have a point.
Her bubble talk made me realize that we are all raised in bubbles of some kind. Even if some of those bubbles are a little cracked and broken, they are still bubbles. No matter how diverse we may think our environment is, our home is always our biggest influence. In most cases, our home revolves around our parents and no matter how different their individual cultures or even races might be, they were attracted to each other and in some way think alike. They have some things in common that are sure to influence their children, ie - us.
There are bubbles everywhere. A house is a bubble, a block is a bubble, a street, a neighborhood, a school, a city, a country, a continent. We all develop instincts, prejudices, fears - based on the environments in the various bubbles we grew up in.
My parents, for example, were by no means snobs. Nor were they rich or even slightly fancy people - but my father grew up on a farm in Estonia and my mother grew up in a notoriously picky Irish family. As a result of this, there were no Chef-Boy-R-Dee cans in my home growing up. I used to look at my classmates lunches and talk to them about what they ate for dinner and I'd hear things like "rice and beans" and "Spaghetti-O's" and make the gross-face and ask innocent questions like, "where's the meat?". I was labeled a snob by many of my classmates. Don't you see how unfair that was? It's the damn bubbles fault.
In my adult life, I have found myself held back in so many ways. I spent many of my formative years cooped up in my room watching TV or playing video games. Now I find in my adult life that I really enjoy sitting in my apartment typing on my computer, sending e-mails.
The bubbles again!
Next time you find fault with yourself or another person, just think about this bubble idea and instead of stressing yourself out and/or getting angry or depressed, just shout out, "I hate you fargin bubbles! Bubbles suck! Break! Break, you damn bubbles!"
OK, maybe that's too long, but you can figure out how you want to say it. It doesn't matter as long as you just blame the bubbles.
Anyway, I recall having the misfortune to be invited to lunch with this particularly strange woman. She basically dominated the entire lunch conversation, boring us with the story of her life in what she constantly referred to as "a bubble".
I live in a slightly iffy part of town which hugs East Harlem and so, this woman, who appeared to be about thirty, was apparently just in her early twenties and "scared" to go out at night because Latin men find her "irresistible" and "cat call" her constantly. She was worried that one of these sweaty, hot-blooded "mens" would one day grab her by the neck and force her to do the merengue. I was slightly unsympathetic to this woman, not just because I wanted her to die as soon as possible, but also because she seemed geniunely uncomfortable living in my hood. She lived around the corner and was basically telling me I lived in a shithole neighborhood which didn't sit well with me. I mean, I pay good money to live here and I like it. So, innocently, I asked her why she was so unprepared for life in the big city among various people of color.
Here started the "bubble" references.
"I'm unprepared to live like this because I grew up in a bubble, okay! I had a maid, okay. I had nothing but rich Jewish white people around me all the time. I had friends who played tennis and went to parties at the yacht club on the weekends, okay? I was in this...this...this BUBBLE! Okay!"
So the feeling of common hatred that I felt the second my eyes had met hers was growing into a black rancor that I could amost feel oozing out of my skin. I literally wanted her to have an accident right there in the restaurant. But I remained calm and the venom in my veins slowly cooled to a soft pity. I sensed that she invisioned her life in a bubble as something to be proud of, despite her pretense of shame at living a life of privilege - a life which I still suspect she may or may not have lived. Though the black sheet she was wearing might have come from a very nice store on 34th Street, I didn't notice anyting about her that said, "I'm refined and well-educated. I am too genteel to live in el barrio con los nacos." So, I took her paranoia to be the result of some kind of pseudo-sophisticated delusion.
I know, this is supposed to be all about me and my life, starting from zygotedom, but I have a point.
Her bubble talk made me realize that we are all raised in bubbles of some kind. Even if some of those bubbles are a little cracked and broken, they are still bubbles. No matter how diverse we may think our environment is, our home is always our biggest influence. In most cases, our home revolves around our parents and no matter how different their individual cultures or even races might be, they were attracted to each other and in some way think alike. They have some things in common that are sure to influence their children, ie - us.
There are bubbles everywhere. A house is a bubble, a block is a bubble, a street, a neighborhood, a school, a city, a country, a continent. We all develop instincts, prejudices, fears - based on the environments in the various bubbles we grew up in.
My parents, for example, were by no means snobs. Nor were they rich or even slightly fancy people - but my father grew up on a farm in Estonia and my mother grew up in a notoriously picky Irish family. As a result of this, there were no Chef-Boy-R-Dee cans in my home growing up. I used to look at my classmates lunches and talk to them about what they ate for dinner and I'd hear things like "rice and beans" and "Spaghetti-O's" and make the gross-face and ask innocent questions like, "where's the meat?". I was labeled a snob by many of my classmates. Don't you see how unfair that was? It's the damn bubbles fault.
In my adult life, I have found myself held back in so many ways. I spent many of my formative years cooped up in my room watching TV or playing video games. Now I find in my adult life that I really enjoy sitting in my apartment typing on my computer, sending e-mails.
The bubbles again!
Next time you find fault with yourself or another person, just think about this bubble idea and instead of stressing yourself out and/or getting angry or depressed, just shout out, "I hate you fargin bubbles! Bubbles suck! Break! Break, you damn bubbles!"
OK, maybe that's too long, but you can figure out how you want to say it. It doesn't matter as long as you just blame the bubbles.
Friday, June 09, 2006
Critical of the Masses
I remember being a small child and listening to my sisters and Aldo (my oder brother was nicer and didn't do this) constantly criticize people - even themselves. I assume that this behavior, which might have been normal for teenagers and those in their early twenties like my siblings were, was what led to to a life of cynicism.
I was in Sweden with my parents when I was about ten and I remember my mother being ebarassed by me cutting up virtually every famous American brought up by my relatives there. I couldn't understand why my relatives seemed to think that every famous person was either beautiful or handsome. To me, almost everyone was ugly and stupid. I was critical of every aspect of faces, bodies, cothes, hair, personality, acting ability, athletic skill, intelligence, morality, personality disorders - you name it. And who was I to criticize? I still don't know.
My cousin was a fan of Marylou Retton who had just gotten 10's at the Olympics. I recall saying she was ugly and a little fat. My mother nudged me in the side. One of my cousins complimented her on her incredible athletic ability. I suggested the judging was fixed. My mother nudged me harder. My cousin reminded us how proud we must be as Americans, to have this great athletic hero and I responded with a "not really" and a "who cares about stupid girl's gymastics". My mother wanted to pound me into the floor at that point.
I also had a big mouth and annoyed her in other ways on that trip.
My sister Jaqui, who had always kept company with the fancier set, had gone to a fundraising sale at a public school in Bronxville. (Bronxville is one of the richest towns in America, for those not in the know.) At this particular sale, there were unused-used children's clothes being sold and Jaqui picked up about five Lacoste aligator golf shirts in various colors for her favorite little brother. (That'd be me.)
Guess what they cost?
One freekin' dollar! Amazing. OK, this was more than 20 years ago, but it was still amazing.
Anyway, I had no idea what these things cost in retail, but I knew that Jaqui had picked them up for a buck a piece because she quickly got reimbursed by my mother - Jaqui was no fool when it came to money.
So, in Sweden, my cousins commented on my "rich" wardrobe as Lacoste must have been hot there at the time. I remember my mother's face as I said this. She looked so irritated - like she wanted to kill me. I asked with surprise, "This thing? You know what this cost? A dollar. It's no big whoop."
My mother almost knocked me off the table when she pinched my leg under the table.
My cousins, noting her embarrassment lauhed it off. "You're so funny. The United States is not that cheap!"
When I was just five, I remember having a birthday party with my relatives in New York and my mother's sister, Pasquelina, gave me a bag of colored briefs. I remember opening it and not even waiting a second before I said, "Underwear? This is not a birthday present."
My mother turned the color of my crimson Crayola. Secretly, I felt her pain, but I didn't care too much. I genuinely couldn't fathom, in my five-year-old brain, why aunt Pasqui would give me underwear for a huge event like my fifth birthday. I started forming ideas in my head about how she must have thought my parent's weren't doing well and that they couldn't afford to buy me underwear, which I would get on any old day without having to reach some milestone, lose a tooth or achieve some level of pre-school success. (Imagine if the tooth fairy left you briefs instead of money!)
What was wrong with Aunt Pasquelina? Why would she think that was appropriate? OK, I embarrassed my mom by negating the value of Pasqui's gift, but Pasquelina embarrassed me in front of my friends and family by giving me, not only intimate apparrel, but COLORED BRIEFS, for God's sake! I mean, what did I look like? A friggin' Turkish sailor? Julio Iglesias? A forty-year-old guy who hangs out it single's bars and brings whores back to his disco-balled bedroom to make whoopie on his vibrating heart-shaped bed?
No, I was not the type to wear such things, even at five.
I remember Underoos were a fashion trend and I wanted nothing to do with. Wearing spider-man shooting his web over my wee wee wasn't for me. What kind of message does that imply? Think about it, America!
To add insult to injury, my mother forced me to use the colored undies and I recall getting a humiliating infection in my pee-hole from the yellow ones.
(Secretly - and ironically, I liked the convenience of those yellow ones as they didn't show the pee stains at all.)
You see, my rudeness and prejudice is often just God looking out for me. He knew those underwear were bad news and he sent me that message when I opened them up.
That's why, I have decided, it's OK to be critical sometimes.
I was in Sweden with my parents when I was about ten and I remember my mother being ebarassed by me cutting up virtually every famous American brought up by my relatives there. I couldn't understand why my relatives seemed to think that every famous person was either beautiful or handsome. To me, almost everyone was ugly and stupid. I was critical of every aspect of faces, bodies, cothes, hair, personality, acting ability, athletic skill, intelligence, morality, personality disorders - you name it. And who was I to criticize? I still don't know.
My cousin was a fan of Marylou Retton who had just gotten 10's at the Olympics. I recall saying she was ugly and a little fat. My mother nudged me in the side. One of my cousins complimented her on her incredible athletic ability. I suggested the judging was fixed. My mother nudged me harder. My cousin reminded us how proud we must be as Americans, to have this great athletic hero and I responded with a "not really" and a "who cares about stupid girl's gymastics". My mother wanted to pound me into the floor at that point.
I also had a big mouth and annoyed her in other ways on that trip.
My sister Jaqui, who had always kept company with the fancier set, had gone to a fundraising sale at a public school in Bronxville. (Bronxville is one of the richest towns in America, for those not in the know.) At this particular sale, there were unused-used children's clothes being sold and Jaqui picked up about five Lacoste aligator golf shirts in various colors for her favorite little brother. (That'd be me.)
Guess what they cost?
One freekin' dollar! Amazing. OK, this was more than 20 years ago, but it was still amazing.
Anyway, I had no idea what these things cost in retail, but I knew that Jaqui had picked them up for a buck a piece because she quickly got reimbursed by my mother - Jaqui was no fool when it came to money.
So, in Sweden, my cousins commented on my "rich" wardrobe as Lacoste must have been hot there at the time. I remember my mother's face as I said this. She looked so irritated - like she wanted to kill me. I asked with surprise, "This thing? You know what this cost? A dollar. It's no big whoop."
My mother almost knocked me off the table when she pinched my leg under the table.
My cousins, noting her embarrassment lauhed it off. "You're so funny. The United States is not that cheap!"
When I was just five, I remember having a birthday party with my relatives in New York and my mother's sister, Pasquelina, gave me a bag of colored briefs. I remember opening it and not even waiting a second before I said, "Underwear? This is not a birthday present."
My mother turned the color of my crimson Crayola. Secretly, I felt her pain, but I didn't care too much. I genuinely couldn't fathom, in my five-year-old brain, why aunt Pasqui would give me underwear for a huge event like my fifth birthday. I started forming ideas in my head about how she must have thought my parent's weren't doing well and that they couldn't afford to buy me underwear, which I would get on any old day without having to reach some milestone, lose a tooth or achieve some level of pre-school success. (Imagine if the tooth fairy left you briefs instead of money!)
What was wrong with Aunt Pasquelina? Why would she think that was appropriate? OK, I embarrassed my mom by negating the value of Pasqui's gift, but Pasquelina embarrassed me in front of my friends and family by giving me, not only intimate apparrel, but COLORED BRIEFS, for God's sake! I mean, what did I look like? A friggin' Turkish sailor? Julio Iglesias? A forty-year-old guy who hangs out it single's bars and brings whores back to his disco-balled bedroom to make whoopie on his vibrating heart-shaped bed?
No, I was not the type to wear such things, even at five.
I remember Underoos were a fashion trend and I wanted nothing to do with. Wearing spider-man shooting his web over my wee wee wasn't for me. What kind of message does that imply? Think about it, America!
To add insult to injury, my mother forced me to use the colored undies and I recall getting a humiliating infection in my pee-hole from the yellow ones.
(Secretly - and ironically, I liked the convenience of those yellow ones as they didn't show the pee stains at all.)
You see, my rudeness and prejudice is often just God looking out for me. He knew those underwear were bad news and he sent me that message when I opened them up.
That's why, I have decided, it's OK to be critical sometimes.
Monday, June 05, 2006
ADHD
So, I volunteered for an ADHD study recently and am pretty psyched about it.
I've always thought that I was a victim of some kind of pshychological defect and after my initial interview with one of the shrinks at a major medical center I feel almost justified in wasting countless years worrying about what was wrong with me. Apparently I answered all the questions right. Even the ones that weren't asked!
As a young boy, I remember seeing the film "The Omen" which actually has a remake coming out this week. In fact today is 6/6/06, so there's a method to my madness after all.
Anyway, I remember thinking that there was something wrong with my mind and after I saw that movie. I worried that I might one day not be able to enter a church or that holy water would burn my skin. Of course, after I saw "Jesus of Nazareth" I also considered the possiblity that I could be the third coming - which of course also meant that I was here to get the Book of Revelations on a roll. Either way, I was bad news for the not-so-good people of Mother Earth.
As time passed and I realized that I didn't have telekinetic powers and that I couldn't make my enemies commit suicide or have untimely "accidents" no matter how hard I willed it to happen, I started to realize that I might be retarded. This idea was reinforced in fifth grade, when my mother and father forced me to change schools and attend St. Bernard's Academy where I proceeded to have problems with math. Up to then, school had not been much of a challenge but then this math thing happened. I couldn't get it. I was completely lost in class and had almost no idea what my torturer, I mean, my teacher, Mrs. Calcification, had in mind when she was talking about fractions and decimals. It was like she was speaking Chinese sometimes, but she was Italian-American and I'm pretty sure she didn't know any Asian languages.
So as the years passed, my math problems continued and by the time I was in high school they spread to the sciences and philology as well. Well, I pretty much knew there was a problem as soon as it started in fifth grade. I immediately began to seek help within myself. I had always found myself to be my best counselor because whenever I asked anyone else for advice all I heard was "wah wah wah wha..." and that didn't usually help much.
So my inner voice told me several times - from the age of ten to the much-more-recent past - that I was retarded. I was doing well in other areas though. I was also keenly aware that most of the people I dealt with on a daily basis, including many of my teachers, were vastly inferior to me both intellectually and physically. I therefore concluded that I was a "special" retard. I was kind of a lucky retarded person because I was able to fool everyone around me into thinking I was normal because I didn't have the physical characteristics of a retarded person, nor was I so spastic. I was also able to get through school as a farily above-average student despite having no idea what anyone was talking about most of the time.
I avoided intellectual and sporting activities that required a lot attention to detail. If I had too much to think about I was sure to get confused and either made fun of by a teacher or hit in the head by a ball and laughed at by my peers. School became a very stressful environment for me and by the time I was eleven I couldn't wait for it to end. "Only eleven more years of this", I told myself daily. By the time I was in college, though, things got easier. There was less pressure to perform in front of others and I could take my time writing and thinking. I found myself to be much less inclined to want my enemies to die by being hit by speeding 18-wheel trucks or to be eaten by cockroaches. I started to think that maybe my mother might have been unwittingly abusing some kind of narcotic disgused as a diet pill while pregnant with me. That could be the reason for the challenges that I faced. At any rate, I was still getting by and at times was praised by my teachers - though never to my satisfaction.
I have a friend who has hinted that I might have ADD or ADHD but I never took it too seriously since I think it's something most people have to some degree. Only now, I have come to a point in my life where I feel that something is amiss to the degree that it's preventing me from growing. I guess only time will tell. I just hope it's not too much time before I know more about who I can be and if I like him and want to stay him or go back to the me I am now.
I've always thought that I was a victim of some kind of pshychological defect and after my initial interview with one of the shrinks at a major medical center I feel almost justified in wasting countless years worrying about what was wrong with me. Apparently I answered all the questions right. Even the ones that weren't asked!
As a young boy, I remember seeing the film "The Omen" which actually has a remake coming out this week. In fact today is 6/6/06, so there's a method to my madness after all.
Anyway, I remember thinking that there was something wrong with my mind and after I saw that movie. I worried that I might one day not be able to enter a church or that holy water would burn my skin. Of course, after I saw "Jesus of Nazareth" I also considered the possiblity that I could be the third coming - which of course also meant that I was here to get the Book of Revelations on a roll. Either way, I was bad news for the not-so-good people of Mother Earth.
As time passed and I realized that I didn't have telekinetic powers and that I couldn't make my enemies commit suicide or have untimely "accidents" no matter how hard I willed it to happen, I started to realize that I might be retarded. This idea was reinforced in fifth grade, when my mother and father forced me to change schools and attend St. Bernard's Academy where I proceeded to have problems with math. Up to then, school had not been much of a challenge but then this math thing happened. I couldn't get it. I was completely lost in class and had almost no idea what my torturer, I mean, my teacher, Mrs. Calcification, had in mind when she was talking about fractions and decimals. It was like she was speaking Chinese sometimes, but she was Italian-American and I'm pretty sure she didn't know any Asian languages.
So as the years passed, my math problems continued and by the time I was in high school they spread to the sciences and philology as well. Well, I pretty much knew there was a problem as soon as it started in fifth grade. I immediately began to seek help within myself. I had always found myself to be my best counselor because whenever I asked anyone else for advice all I heard was "wah wah wah wha..." and that didn't usually help much.
So my inner voice told me several times - from the age of ten to the much-more-recent past - that I was retarded. I was doing well in other areas though. I was also keenly aware that most of the people I dealt with on a daily basis, including many of my teachers, were vastly inferior to me both intellectually and physically. I therefore concluded that I was a "special" retard. I was kind of a lucky retarded person because I was able to fool everyone around me into thinking I was normal because I didn't have the physical characteristics of a retarded person, nor was I so spastic. I was also able to get through school as a farily above-average student despite having no idea what anyone was talking about most of the time.
I avoided intellectual and sporting activities that required a lot attention to detail. If I had too much to think about I was sure to get confused and either made fun of by a teacher or hit in the head by a ball and laughed at by my peers. School became a very stressful environment for me and by the time I was eleven I couldn't wait for it to end. "Only eleven more years of this", I told myself daily. By the time I was in college, though, things got easier. There was less pressure to perform in front of others and I could take my time writing and thinking. I found myself to be much less inclined to want my enemies to die by being hit by speeding 18-wheel trucks or to be eaten by cockroaches. I started to think that maybe my mother might have been unwittingly abusing some kind of narcotic disgused as a diet pill while pregnant with me. That could be the reason for the challenges that I faced. At any rate, I was still getting by and at times was praised by my teachers - though never to my satisfaction.
I have a friend who has hinted that I might have ADD or ADHD but I never took it too seriously since I think it's something most people have to some degree. Only now, I have come to a point in my life where I feel that something is amiss to the degree that it's preventing me from growing. I guess only time will tell. I just hope it's not too much time before I know more about who I can be and if I like him and want to stay him or go back to the me I am now.
Thursday, May 18, 2006
Dead Pets
I was always a dog lover. Nowadays, I don't consider myself a true dog lover because I am allergic to pretty much anything with hair - even myself! I actually get a rash everywhere I have fur or hair, but that's just disgusting and I won't burden/disgust you with any further knowledge of that.
Back to my childhood traumas.
I had my first dog when I was too young to remember. I know I was supposedly a genius but I do forget things...or maybe I wasn't a genius. I don't recall.
So, I had this dog, Angus, which my dad murdered when I was about four. He didn't mean it, but it was a murder just the same, I say. Poor Angus. He was a nice dog. He's buried in my parents' backyard along with a bunch of other dead pets. After my dad backed his truck up (and over) Angus, we got these two crazy-ass poodles someone in my family decided to name Lola & Peaches. I think
the initial names were Salt & Pepper and then someone decided that we couldn't tell which one was Salt and which was Pepper so it would be easier to call them names that are less "connected". We couldn't tell Lola from Peaches either but at least it didn't feel like it mattered. Anyway both dogs were extemely stupid and had extreme intestinal issues which casued them to skate across the floors of our house, leaving very interesting (and smelly!) skid marks everywhere. After a couple of days of that fun, my dad locked L&P in the basement where they barked for about 48 hours before they were sold to a farmer in New Jersey. My father told the poor farmer that the dogs were very well "housebroken". What he meant by that was that they nearly broke up the house with their shitnanigans but the lie served it's real purpose and the guy took them. I heard he was quite upset later on but my dad never left a phone number so he was stuck with them until he decided to shoot them or give them away. I'm guessing L&P might have found doggy heaven shortly after they got to the farm though.
A few months after the last remnants of dog smell had evaporated, my brother Aldo brought home "Cheeks" from some frankenbreeders on his paper-route. They had decided to mix a Shih-Tzu and a Minature Pinscher to create a new "master breed" of toy dog. Instead they got these really weird-looking puppies that looked something like Salacious Crumb from 'The Return of the Jedi'. Cheeks, who turned out to be a kind of genius dog, was also quite the neighborhood slut. The name fit well. Despite this, my grandmother, who lived with us at the time and who was a very proper Irish/English woman, refused to accept that name. She just completely ignored it when we presented Cheeks to her and looked at the dog and said, "oh, how sweet. Her name is Princess! Princess Alice Victoria!"
Can you believe that sit?
She just up and renamed the dog!
Not only that but she renamed the dog the gayest, most retarded name anyone could ever think up. We ALL completely rejected the name and decided that it was best not to upset Granny by telling her this. So, we just let her call Cheeks that stupid name while we went on calling her Cheeks. I think it was confusing for the dog and it may have created a kind of "dual identity" that fostered this whole whore/madonna complex that she apparently had.
She played the role of the innocent pretty well until one day I came home from school and my mother started screaming at me for spilling milk all over the floor.
I had been yelled at the day before for the same thing and, since I have memmory issues, I took the heat for it thinking I was just going insane. (I had that feeling a lot as a child.)
But this time, I was not taking it. "I just walked in the door!" When did I have time to spill milk, Ma!"
Well, I had seen Cheeks getting busy with a local stray dog out by the johnny pump about three weeks before. That coupled with the fact that she's suddenly gained a belly that was nearly dragging on the floor let me to the conclusion that Cheeks was pregnant.
"I told you I saw her with that white dog a few weeks ago, Ma! She's a slut and she's pregnant with his bastard puppies!"
(Well, as you might have guessed, I couldn't have gotten away with the word bastard, so I think I said "bastage", which is from 'Johnny Dangerously', a film which facilitated my need to fake-curse for many a year.)
Mom refused to believe this up until the minute Cheeks gave birth. Cheeks had completely torn up the rug in the den building a "nest" for her birthing and Ma still didn't get it.
"That dog's gone nuts!", she said.
Like her owner.
Anyway, the dog popped three puppies - two live and one deadish on April 29th and one runt on April 30th. The runt was rejected by the bitch and so I had to buy doggy formula and feed him myself. We developed a bond and I kept him telling my parents that I would give up "Hogan" over my dead body and that if they wanted to be responsible for the death of their child they could get rid of the dog.
Cheeks was pissed. There was not room enough in our 15-room house for two dogs. She spent the next six months trying to abandon Hogan. She'd sneak out of the house with him and disappear to God-knows-where and then come back in the middle of the night with a gaggle of boy-mutts and no Hogan in sight. I usually went out to find him in some neighbors garden whining because he couldn't figure out how to get out from behind the fence.
Poor Hogan. He didn't have Cheeks' smarts.
While she was basically able to communicate with snarls, sneezes and looks, Hogan just romped around, getting hit by the occasional car, peeling dead pigeons off the street and hoarding cat poo. Oh, how he loved cat poo! When he found it he'd get so excited that he'd just roll around in it. He didn't seem to mind that it stuck to his fur and made him smell a little worse than usual. He just seemed so happy when he found some. It was like he was in love with cat shit.
Wouldn't it be nice if we could all be so happy with the simple things in life?
Imagine you're feeling sad and lonely. You have your morning coffee which leads to your late-morning bowel movement and just before you're about to flush...bliss!
Back to my childhood traumas.
I had my first dog when I was too young to remember. I know I was supposedly a genius but I do forget things...or maybe I wasn't a genius. I don't recall.
So, I had this dog, Angus, which my dad murdered when I was about four. He didn't mean it, but it was a murder just the same, I say. Poor Angus. He was a nice dog. He's buried in my parents' backyard along with a bunch of other dead pets. After my dad backed his truck up (and over) Angus, we got these two crazy-ass poodles someone in my family decided to name Lola & Peaches. I think
the initial names were Salt & Pepper and then someone decided that we couldn't tell which one was Salt and which was Pepper so it would be easier to call them names that are less "connected". We couldn't tell Lola from Peaches either but at least it didn't feel like it mattered. Anyway both dogs were extemely stupid and had extreme intestinal issues which casued them to skate across the floors of our house, leaving very interesting (and smelly!) skid marks everywhere. After a couple of days of that fun, my dad locked L&P in the basement where they barked for about 48 hours before they were sold to a farmer in New Jersey. My father told the poor farmer that the dogs were very well "housebroken". What he meant by that was that they nearly broke up the house with their shitnanigans but the lie served it's real purpose and the guy took them. I heard he was quite upset later on but my dad never left a phone number so he was stuck with them until he decided to shoot them or give them away. I'm guessing L&P might have found doggy heaven shortly after they got to the farm though.
A few months after the last remnants of dog smell had evaporated, my brother Aldo brought home "Cheeks" from some frankenbreeders on his paper-route. They had decided to mix a Shih-Tzu and a Minature Pinscher to create a new "master breed" of toy dog. Instead they got these really weird-looking puppies that looked something like Salacious Crumb from 'The Return of the Jedi'. Cheeks, who turned out to be a kind of genius dog, was also quite the neighborhood slut. The name fit well. Despite this, my grandmother, who lived with us at the time and who was a very proper Irish/English woman, refused to accept that name. She just completely ignored it when we presented Cheeks to her and looked at the dog and said, "oh, how sweet. Her name is Princess! Princess Alice Victoria!"
Can you believe that sit?
She just up and renamed the dog!
Not only that but she renamed the dog the gayest, most retarded name anyone could ever think up. We ALL completely rejected the name and decided that it was best not to upset Granny by telling her this. So, we just let her call Cheeks that stupid name while we went on calling her Cheeks. I think it was confusing for the dog and it may have created a kind of "dual identity" that fostered this whole whore/madonna complex that she apparently had.
She played the role of the innocent pretty well until one day I came home from school and my mother started screaming at me for spilling milk all over the floor.
I had been yelled at the day before for the same thing and, since I have memmory issues, I took the heat for it thinking I was just going insane. (I had that feeling a lot as a child.)
But this time, I was not taking it. "I just walked in the door!" When did I have time to spill milk, Ma!"
Well, I had seen Cheeks getting busy with a local stray dog out by the johnny pump about three weeks before. That coupled with the fact that she's suddenly gained a belly that was nearly dragging on the floor let me to the conclusion that Cheeks was pregnant.
"I told you I saw her with that white dog a few weeks ago, Ma! She's a slut and she's pregnant with his bastard puppies!"
(Well, as you might have guessed, I couldn't have gotten away with the word bastard, so I think I said "bastage", which is from 'Johnny Dangerously', a film which facilitated my need to fake-curse for many a year.)
Mom refused to believe this up until the minute Cheeks gave birth. Cheeks had completely torn up the rug in the den building a "nest" for her birthing and Ma still didn't get it.
"That dog's gone nuts!", she said.
Like her owner.
Anyway, the dog popped three puppies - two live and one deadish on April 29th and one runt on April 30th. The runt was rejected by the bitch and so I had to buy doggy formula and feed him myself. We developed a bond and I kept him telling my parents that I would give up "Hogan" over my dead body and that if they wanted to be responsible for the death of their child they could get rid of the dog.
Cheeks was pissed. There was not room enough in our 15-room house for two dogs. She spent the next six months trying to abandon Hogan. She'd sneak out of the house with him and disappear to God-knows-where and then come back in the middle of the night with a gaggle of boy-mutts and no Hogan in sight. I usually went out to find him in some neighbors garden whining because he couldn't figure out how to get out from behind the fence.
Poor Hogan. He didn't have Cheeks' smarts.
While she was basically able to communicate with snarls, sneezes and looks, Hogan just romped around, getting hit by the occasional car, peeling dead pigeons off the street and hoarding cat poo. Oh, how he loved cat poo! When he found it he'd get so excited that he'd just roll around in it. He didn't seem to mind that it stuck to his fur and made him smell a little worse than usual. He just seemed so happy when he found some. It was like he was in love with cat shit.
Wouldn't it be nice if we could all be so happy with the simple things in life?
Imagine you're feeling sad and lonely. You have your morning coffee which leads to your late-morning bowel movement and just before you're about to flush...bliss!
Monday, May 15, 2006
Inadequacy
It seems that no matter what I have done or what I do, I feel inadequate at some point when reflecting on my accomplishments, or lack there of.
One of my mantras as a child was, "I don't know how". You've already read (well, maybe you didn't pay atteniton or skipped it) that Gerty didn't teach me how to swim. Well, nobody really seemed too interested in teaching me how to do anything after I was about one and a half. I think they tried so hard when I was in the initial stages of psychological and physical development and that I had made such nice progress that they assumed by the time I was one year old, I could pretty much figure out the rest on my own. The trouble is I never found out what "the rest" was. I am still not sure - over thirty years later. Nearly everything I do, no matter how many times I've done it or how many times I've watched other people do it, I feel like I'm doing it with my eyes closed and I have no idea how it's going to end.
Well. Now that I think about it, not nearly EVERYTHING. I suppose everyday things like picking your nose and finding just the right place to flick the booger, flipping open your cell phone, turning on the computer, flushing the toilet...those things come pretty naturally after a few tries. But maybe not. Take wiping your ass for example. It's not always easy. Sometimes it just goes quickly and boom, bam, you're done. Other times it takes FOREVER. Is it your lack of skill or coordination that makes it take so long or is it just that sometimes you've digested things a little too well? Perhaps this is only something that happens to me and you have no idea what I'm talking about. Oh, how embarassing, if that's the case. Perhaps you DO know what I'm talking about though. You'll have to admit that life throws you for a loop sometimes and it's very frustrating.
Wouldn't it have been great if we were instructed on just the right techniques for everything we have to do on a daily basis? Of course, most of us would have been mortified to take an ass-wiping class, as young children. But then again, it's better to get that kind of thing over with as younguns than to have to endure the humiliation as adults. Our collective solution has been to just ignore those details and continue making mistakes and living with the "skidmarks".
Speaking of skidmarks, my mother - we just celebrated Mother's Day yesterday - who is an angel and a beautiful person inside and out, was never much for housework. She hated it from the getgo and since I was the last born, I guess I saw her do the least of it. To show you the extent to which I believe I was deliberately not taught things as a child, I will tell you the story of the washing machine. It's not an interesting story, but it illustrates my point.
So, I'm eleven. The next youngest is Aldo, who is almost nineteen. My mother comes into the room we shared on a gloomy Saturday morning and announces this: "I'm not uh, doing your laundry any more." Then she leaves. That was it!
Can you believe that?
So, I look at my brother, who just shrugs his shoulders and puts his head back on the pillow.
I was horrified - dumbfoundedand for several seconds - and didn't know what to do. I looked over at Aldo who was already sound asleep and then I ran out of my bedroom and down the stairs after my mother who was eating an icepop. She was always eating icepops and in fact, she continues to eat them today. She eats them now the same way she did then - with the entire box wrapped under her left arm as she holds one icepop in her right hand and sucks the life out of it. She holds the box in case someome like Gertty comes along and tries to swipe the box.
It's not that she's greedy. Oh, she offers ices to others. She often insists that you "try one" because they're "delicious" but few take her up on her offers because she has a look on her face like those icepops are her most prized possessions and that they are literally giving her the breath of life. Who's going to take her breath of life??? Certainly not me. Anyway, I don't really like icepops too much.
So, back to the washing machine.
I chased down ma, pulled on her icepop box and looked her straight in the eye. She looked back at me and said, "Want an icepop? They're delicious." I ignored the offer. "Ma. how are my clothes gonna get washed?"
"With the machine", she almost innocently replied.
"But I have no idea how to use that machine, ma."
"Learn", is all she said back. Then she went in the back room to watch TV with her icepops.
Since then, I've been doing my own laundry. I've never really learned to do it well. My clothes never seem really clean and fresh.
I blame the system.
One of my mantras as a child was, "I don't know how". You've already read (well, maybe you didn't pay atteniton or skipped it) that Gerty didn't teach me how to swim. Well, nobody really seemed too interested in teaching me how to do anything after I was about one and a half. I think they tried so hard when I was in the initial stages of psychological and physical development and that I had made such nice progress that they assumed by the time I was one year old, I could pretty much figure out the rest on my own. The trouble is I never found out what "the rest" was. I am still not sure - over thirty years later. Nearly everything I do, no matter how many times I've done it or how many times I've watched other people do it, I feel like I'm doing it with my eyes closed and I have no idea how it's going to end.
Well. Now that I think about it, not nearly EVERYTHING. I suppose everyday things like picking your nose and finding just the right place to flick the booger, flipping open your cell phone, turning on the computer, flushing the toilet...those things come pretty naturally after a few tries. But maybe not. Take wiping your ass for example. It's not always easy. Sometimes it just goes quickly and boom, bam, you're done. Other times it takes FOREVER. Is it your lack of skill or coordination that makes it take so long or is it just that sometimes you've digested things a little too well? Perhaps this is only something that happens to me and you have no idea what I'm talking about. Oh, how embarassing, if that's the case. Perhaps you DO know what I'm talking about though. You'll have to admit that life throws you for a loop sometimes and it's very frustrating.
Wouldn't it have been great if we were instructed on just the right techniques for everything we have to do on a daily basis? Of course, most of us would have been mortified to take an ass-wiping class, as young children. But then again, it's better to get that kind of thing over with as younguns than to have to endure the humiliation as adults. Our collective solution has been to just ignore those details and continue making mistakes and living with the "skidmarks".
Speaking of skidmarks, my mother - we just celebrated Mother's Day yesterday - who is an angel and a beautiful person inside and out, was never much for housework. She hated it from the getgo and since I was the last born, I guess I saw her do the least of it. To show you the extent to which I believe I was deliberately not taught things as a child, I will tell you the story of the washing machine. It's not an interesting story, but it illustrates my point.
So, I'm eleven. The next youngest is Aldo, who is almost nineteen. My mother comes into the room we shared on a gloomy Saturday morning and announces this: "I'm not uh, doing your laundry any more." Then she leaves. That was it!
Can you believe that?
So, I look at my brother, who just shrugs his shoulders and puts his head back on the pillow.
I was horrified - dumbfoundedand for several seconds - and didn't know what to do. I looked over at Aldo who was already sound asleep and then I ran out of my bedroom and down the stairs after my mother who was eating an icepop. She was always eating icepops and in fact, she continues to eat them today. She eats them now the same way she did then - with the entire box wrapped under her left arm as she holds one icepop in her right hand and sucks the life out of it. She holds the box in case someome like Gertty comes along and tries to swipe the box.
It's not that she's greedy. Oh, she offers ices to others. She often insists that you "try one" because they're "delicious" but few take her up on her offers because she has a look on her face like those icepops are her most prized possessions and that they are literally giving her the breath of life. Who's going to take her breath of life??? Certainly not me. Anyway, I don't really like icepops too much.
So, back to the washing machine.
I chased down ma, pulled on her icepop box and looked her straight in the eye. She looked back at me and said, "Want an icepop? They're delicious." I ignored the offer. "Ma. how are my clothes gonna get washed?"
"With the machine", she almost innocently replied.
"But I have no idea how to use that machine, ma."
"Learn", is all she said back. Then she went in the back room to watch TV with her icepops.
Since then, I've been doing my own laundry. I've never really learned to do it well. My clothes never seem really clean and fresh.
I blame the system.
Thursday, May 11, 2006
25 Million Dollars
Just to step away from my childhood for a moment. I want to take some time today to reflect on the fact that I need 25 million dollars.
Why, you ask?
Well, it's simple really. I don't want to work anymore. I feel that I've suffered under opressive bosses long enough. I have worked for at least a dozen companies under supervisors who have failed to appreciate my genius.
I don't think 25 bigones is too much to ask. I feel I deserve it. I've been good.
Despite this, the police are constantly giving me tickets even though I don't own a car. Yes. That is amazing. Yet it happens to me all the time. The IRS is auditing me and wants over 5 thousand dollars from me despite the fact that I have bearly earned a livable wage and have earned poverty-level wages for much of my life. In 1999 I earned an embarassingly low wage as a teacher - I can't even tell you how low because it's humiliating. Let's just say cracked-out welfare recipients have more money left over after they buy their fixes for the year. My highest annual income has been less than that of most recent college graduates and in 2004 - which was one of the years in question, I had spend more money than I made. I worked at four jobs that year and my freekin' income was still crap and the IRS wants more of it. I can't take it anymore! What the hell does the MAN want from me???
I'm poor and always have been. Now I want my damn 25 Mil.
I'd use it to start a company and I'd pay off all my family's debts and then I'd hire my friend....let's call him Oreo, from Argentina. Then I'd hire my other friend...let's call him Farter, from Turkey. Oreo has a wife and two kids and Farter is getting married soon, so they will need a good income. I can offer them a good income if I have 25 million, no?
Then I'll have to hire my family members because with riches comes nepotism, plus I think they deserve it. They're mostly poor too...except my one sister who's not so poor...I'll call her, "Jaqui".
I like the "qu" bit....it doesn't suit her at all.
So, if you're rich and reading this. I'd really like 25 million dollars. It would help me out tremendously. Just please don't ask me to do anything in exchange for the money unless it involves doing something I can do while in a reclined position.
OK, next time I'll go back to my childhood.
Why, you ask?
Well, it's simple really. I don't want to work anymore. I feel that I've suffered under opressive bosses long enough. I have worked for at least a dozen companies under supervisors who have failed to appreciate my genius.
I don't think 25 bigones is too much to ask. I feel I deserve it. I've been good.
Despite this, the police are constantly giving me tickets even though I don't own a car. Yes. That is amazing. Yet it happens to me all the time. The IRS is auditing me and wants over 5 thousand dollars from me despite the fact that I have bearly earned a livable wage and have earned poverty-level wages for much of my life. In 1999 I earned an embarassingly low wage as a teacher - I can't even tell you how low because it's humiliating. Let's just say cracked-out welfare recipients have more money left over after they buy their fixes for the year. My highest annual income has been less than that of most recent college graduates and in 2004 - which was one of the years in question, I had spend more money than I made. I worked at four jobs that year and my freekin' income was still crap and the IRS wants more of it. I can't take it anymore! What the hell does the MAN want from me???
I'm poor and always have been. Now I want my damn 25 Mil.
I'd use it to start a company and I'd pay off all my family's debts and then I'd hire my friend....let's call him Oreo, from Argentina. Then I'd hire my other friend...let's call him Farter, from Turkey. Oreo has a wife and two kids and Farter is getting married soon, so they will need a good income. I can offer them a good income if I have 25 million, no?
Then I'll have to hire my family members because with riches comes nepotism, plus I think they deserve it. They're mostly poor too...except my one sister who's not so poor...I'll call her, "Jaqui".
I like the "qu" bit....it doesn't suit her at all.
So, if you're rich and reading this. I'd really like 25 million dollars. It would help me out tremendously. Just please don't ask me to do anything in exchange for the money unless it involves doing something I can do while in a reclined position.
OK, next time I'll go back to my childhood.
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
Recurring Nightmares on Ampere Ave.
As a small child, I had a tendency to have the same dreams over and over and over and over. I don't know if that is/was attributable to my inherent simplicity, if it confirms my as-of-yet undiagnosed ADD (now I suppose it's ADHD), an obsessive-compulsive nature or if God was trying to tell me something.
Being raised by a semi-religious fanatic mother, I usually tend to lend the last option the most value.
I have and always will believe that in these dreams, God was speaking to me.
In the first two, and perhaps oddest of these dreams, I still do not know the messages God was trying to convey. What do you think? (Sorry, I didn't really mean to ask for your opinion. I was just doing it to feign a sense of reaching out to my non-existent audience.)
DREAM #1: THE MISSING THING I WASN'T MISSING
I wake up from my upper bunk bed, climb down the ladder to the cold and unwelcoming morning floor, run down the hall to the stairs, scurry down the stairs and directly to the kitchen. Once in the kitchen, I bolt for the junk drawer where I sift through the heap of mass bulletins, stained fridge magnets and dried up novelty pens to find my missing belt.
I would describe the belt except for the fact that I've totally forgotten what it looked like. I'm not sure it matters anyway. I was about 4 or 5 and really didn't need to wear belts. In reality, I'm not even sure I really had a belt to be missing. I think I did, but it's too long ago to know for sure. I remember the dream well though. I should - I had it about fifty times.
DREAM #2: POLKAZILLA
This one I must have had a hundred times. It was really interesting in that there was no sound in it except for a deep thump when Polkazilla bounces the ball. Okay, I know you're dying to know what it was. I come down the stairs again and all sound is muffled. My sisters and mother are in the kitchen but they don't seem to see me. I go in the garage to find my baby ball so I can bounce it around the sidewalk and pretend it's a basketball. But it's not there! The ball is missing! (In the real world, this ball had been missing since my toddlerhood and I was about 4 or 5 when I had this dream.) Suddenly , the whole house begins to shake as if there's an earthquake right here in New York City! Oh wow! What the H E C K am I gonna do! I'd better go outside and see what's up? I open the garage door and look out over my across-the-street neighbor's house (let's call him Mr. Bozo) and see, above the huge treetops lining the park one block away, the head of something gigantic bobbing up and down. It's Godzilla, I tell myself! Oh no! Godzilla's in the fargin' Bronx! What am I gonna do! I run into the house to tell my sisters and my mother to run for the sewers and they act like I'm not there. I can't speak anyway, there's no sound coming out of my, or anyone's, mouth. In frustration, I run outside again and I see the giant Godzilla figure coming down the block. He's turned the corner and the only thing I can hear/feel is the gargantuan thump of his feet as they hit the ground and make all of Ampere Avenue shake. I run to the backyard and my brother Aldo is there sitting in a circle with his moron friends playing a card game - I think it's go-fish but I'm too stressed to really pay attention to that detail - and I scream to them that Godzilla is coming but they can't hear me or are just ignoring me completely because I'm a pesky kid.
I shake my hands in frustration and run to the front of the house again and I see that the monster is in front of my house! He's not Godzilla though! He's big like Godzilla but he's yellow with a blue stripe down the middle and pink polka dots all over his scaly body. He is the same color as my baby ball!!! Oy vey! What the H E double hockey sticks does this mean? It can only mean one thing. He's after my ball! I sprint for the garage, which has its door wide open, to find my ball. I know this thing is after it and he's not going to get it. Just as I run in, the monster bends over, looks into the garage with one big eye and sticks his claw in the garage. His claw seems magically attracted to the exact location of the ball, which is under a pile of my father's construction crap. He takes the ball and stands up in the middle of Ampere Avenue and seems to smile! Can you believe it? This scaly, pink and yellow Godzilla-creature is taking my darn ball! He starts bouncing the thing, which somehow grows in his hand and proceeds to bounce it all the way back to the park. Boom! Boom! Boom! The earth shakes as he bounces and walks and disappears into Pelham Bay Park. The end.
So what the hell does that mean? I'd love for Freud to interpret that one.
DREAM #3: TUMBLING IN MID AIR DOWN THE STAIRS
This one really requires little explanation. I am about three. I look down the staircase, which has about sixteen steps. I start to step down and then I do this slow-mo tumble in mid air, down the stairway and that's it. Poof! I'm awake. I had that dream about twenty times as a kid.
DREAM #4: MY SISTER'S LEG IS A SALAMI
My youngest sister, who is still 12 years older than I am, has always been a delicate flower of a thing. She's very sensitive, loyal, sweet and I worry about her. Apparently, I worried about her when I was four as well. Let's call this sister, Moniqua. Once again, that couldn't be her name in a million years, but I like the name Moniqua. Actually, I like Sheniqua better, but I think Moniqua somehow suits her better. Anyway, Moniqua was a high school twirler. That means she twirled a baton around and did big leg kicks and such.
In my recurring dream, she was in the kitchen and doing twirls where she kicks high and brings the baton under her leg as she kicks and then above her head again. I think she may have actually done this trick, but again, I'm not sure as I was five and it was a long time ago and I have a lot of memory issues. So, in my dream, when she does the big kick up in the air, her leg comes off at mid thigh and the insides of her leg look just like the salami's hanging from the ceiling at the corner deli run by Mr. LoPadrino!!! She lets out a slow-motion scream and drops her baton, naturally. Then it's over. The dream is over and I wake up worried sick about Moniqua doing those kicks in twirler practice.
That's it. I probably had other more interesting dreams, but those were the most frequent. I had some weird sexual dream also, but I'm not going to say anything other than that for many years I thought it was an actual commercial for Wise potato chips that featured a topless woman saying "Get Wise" while reveling her left breast and holding a bag of chips. Well, I guess that's pretty much telling you the dream. I can't control myself.
Being raised by a semi-religious fanatic mother, I usually tend to lend the last option the most value.
I have and always will believe that in these dreams, God was speaking to me.
In the first two, and perhaps oddest of these dreams, I still do not know the messages God was trying to convey. What do you think? (Sorry, I didn't really mean to ask for your opinion. I was just doing it to feign a sense of reaching out to my non-existent audience.)
DREAM #1: THE MISSING THING I WASN'T MISSING
I wake up from my upper bunk bed, climb down the ladder to the cold and unwelcoming morning floor, run down the hall to the stairs, scurry down the stairs and directly to the kitchen. Once in the kitchen, I bolt for the junk drawer where I sift through the heap of mass bulletins, stained fridge magnets and dried up novelty pens to find my missing belt.
I would describe the belt except for the fact that I've totally forgotten what it looked like. I'm not sure it matters anyway. I was about 4 or 5 and really didn't need to wear belts. In reality, I'm not even sure I really had a belt to be missing. I think I did, but it's too long ago to know for sure. I remember the dream well though. I should - I had it about fifty times.
DREAM #2: POLKAZILLA
This one I must have had a hundred times. It was really interesting in that there was no sound in it except for a deep thump when Polkazilla bounces the ball. Okay, I know you're dying to know what it was. I come down the stairs again and all sound is muffled. My sisters and mother are in the kitchen but they don't seem to see me. I go in the garage to find my baby ball so I can bounce it around the sidewalk and pretend it's a basketball. But it's not there! The ball is missing! (In the real world, this ball had been missing since my toddlerhood and I was about 4 or 5 when I had this dream.) Suddenly , the whole house begins to shake as if there's an earthquake right here in New York City! Oh wow! What the H E C K am I gonna do! I'd better go outside and see what's up? I open the garage door and look out over my across-the-street neighbor's house (let's call him Mr. Bozo) and see, above the huge treetops lining the park one block away, the head of something gigantic bobbing up and down. It's Godzilla, I tell myself! Oh no! Godzilla's in the fargin' Bronx! What am I gonna do! I run into the house to tell my sisters and my mother to run for the sewers and they act like I'm not there. I can't speak anyway, there's no sound coming out of my, or anyone's, mouth. In frustration, I run outside again and I see the giant Godzilla figure coming down the block. He's turned the corner and the only thing I can hear/feel is the gargantuan thump of his feet as they hit the ground and make all of Ampere Avenue shake. I run to the backyard and my brother Aldo is there sitting in a circle with his moron friends playing a card game - I think it's go-fish but I'm too stressed to really pay attention to that detail - and I scream to them that Godzilla is coming but they can't hear me or are just ignoring me completely because I'm a pesky kid.
I shake my hands in frustration and run to the front of the house again and I see that the monster is in front of my house! He's not Godzilla though! He's big like Godzilla but he's yellow with a blue stripe down the middle and pink polka dots all over his scaly body. He is the same color as my baby ball!!! Oy vey! What the H E double hockey sticks does this mean? It can only mean one thing. He's after my ball! I sprint for the garage, which has its door wide open, to find my ball. I know this thing is after it and he's not going to get it. Just as I run in, the monster bends over, looks into the garage with one big eye and sticks his claw in the garage. His claw seems magically attracted to the exact location of the ball, which is under a pile of my father's construction crap. He takes the ball and stands up in the middle of Ampere Avenue and seems to smile! Can you believe it? This scaly, pink and yellow Godzilla-creature is taking my darn ball! He starts bouncing the thing, which somehow grows in his hand and proceeds to bounce it all the way back to the park. Boom! Boom! Boom! The earth shakes as he bounces and walks and disappears into Pelham Bay Park. The end.
So what the hell does that mean? I'd love for Freud to interpret that one.
DREAM #3: TUMBLING IN MID AIR DOWN THE STAIRS
This one really requires little explanation. I am about three. I look down the staircase, which has about sixteen steps. I start to step down and then I do this slow-mo tumble in mid air, down the stairway and that's it. Poof! I'm awake. I had that dream about twenty times as a kid.
DREAM #4: MY SISTER'S LEG IS A SALAMI
My youngest sister, who is still 12 years older than I am, has always been a delicate flower of a thing. She's very sensitive, loyal, sweet and I worry about her. Apparently, I worried about her when I was four as well. Let's call this sister, Moniqua. Once again, that couldn't be her name in a million years, but I like the name Moniqua. Actually, I like Sheniqua better, but I think Moniqua somehow suits her better. Anyway, Moniqua was a high school twirler. That means she twirled a baton around and did big leg kicks and such.
In my recurring dream, she was in the kitchen and doing twirls where she kicks high and brings the baton under her leg as she kicks and then above her head again. I think she may have actually done this trick, but again, I'm not sure as I was five and it was a long time ago and I have a lot of memory issues. So, in my dream, when she does the big kick up in the air, her leg comes off at mid thigh and the insides of her leg look just like the salami's hanging from the ceiling at the corner deli run by Mr. LoPadrino!!! She lets out a slow-motion scream and drops her baton, naturally. Then it's over. The dream is over and I wake up worried sick about Moniqua doing those kicks in twirler practice.
That's it. I probably had other more interesting dreams, but those were the most frequent. I had some weird sexual dream also, but I'm not going to say anything other than that for many years I thought it was an actual commercial for Wise potato chips that featured a topless woman saying "Get Wise" while reveling her left breast and holding a bag of chips. Well, I guess that's pretty much telling you the dream. I can't control myself.
Tuesday, May 02, 2006
Sibling Rivals
I wish I could say that all my brothers and sisters got along just fine, but that's not the case. It rarely is, I guess. In my family there are six kids spread apart 18 years from oldest to best...I mean, youngest (that would be me). As the best or youngest or whatever you might want to label me, I have the fewest problems because everyone looks to me as too young to be responsible for anything. Of course, others who are the youngest know that this has its drawbacks. Like, we're never really trusted by the older ones and our opinions don't have any force - or at least the force that the oldest usually has.
I say "usually" because my oldest sister - let's call her Gertrude or Gerty for short - is one of those classic mental-case older sisters who is bitterly frustrated by her lack of influence on the family. The reasons why she lacks influence (read: trust) will become painfully but humorously clear in my coming posts.
Let's start with the origins of why Gerty was not too big an influence on my life or my way of thinking. (I must mention, however, that her utterly insane persona has made an indelible mark on my psyche just based on it's entertainment value. She's almost created a need in me to know about her nutty meanderings.)
So, basically, Gerty was busy when I was a kid. When I was first born, she was 18 and just about to break out of prison/Catholic high school. She has never been one to change diapers or feed the babies in the family and back then she was no different, I assume. So basically, I don't remember her even existing before I was about five when I accidentally ran into her jungle-themed bedroom to see if I could hug the giant Lion doll that she kept. I'm not sure where she got that thing, but I remember really wanting to hug it all the time. Now a sweet 23-year-old sister would probably have given the thing to her five-year-old brother, but Gerty wasn't sweet. At least not then. Oh, I didn't really want it anyway. Who am I kidding. I was afraid of the damn thing. It was bigger than me and it had black beady eyes. Anyway, I still hold it against her. That and the fact that she was, at that time, a very active swimmer, coach and lifeguard and she never took the time to teach me how to swim. Now I'm a grown man with swim-related issues - but that's a book I might write when I'm older and more bitter. Right now I just want to remember the funny stuff.
Okay, so she was living in that jungle room and almost never home and I barely knew her, but then she came home one day with bleached hair and a huge L'eggs truck. This would mean nothing except that this was the 70's and Charlies Angels was the number one show on TV and Farah Fawcett was THE shit. Gerty just happened to be a near-ringer for Farah with the bleached hair. So, naturally, all my friends were in awe of her. "You're sister looks just like Farah", they used to tell me. I was still annoyed that she wasn't teaching me to swim, so I was always kind of brushing off their comments and saying, "my other two sisters are even better". I still wasn't a Gerty fan. But the L'eggs truck was something to see. This - OK, I will admit Gerty was kind of hot - blond girly-girl driving a huge delivery truck was very interesting to most of the people who saw it. I thought it was moderatly cool until Gerty picked me up at school one day. I suddenly became the most popular kid in my 2nd-grade class at St. Mary's. It wasn't enough to make me most popular in the whole school, but it was a step in the right direction.
Suddenly, everyone was asking me if Farah was going to come pick me up again. I never knew if or when she was coming. It was pot luck with my family. One day I had a ride from who-know's who and the next day I was wating by the bus stop and then walking my eight-year-old ass home from the subway station.
The school was a pain in the ass to get to because it was on City Island - a godforsaken lump of land about three miles from my house on the main land of the Boogey-Down Bronx. (Of course, it wasn't AKA the Boogey Down then, but I had a feeling it was coming, so I'm using it here.) There was no subway there; just a bus. One bus. One slow-ass bus with the same sex-deprived driver day in and day out. In that move, "A Bronx Tale", Robert DeNiro's character is a busdriver to City Island and he's so warm and fuzzy. I guess that guy was dead by the time I was going to school there. My bus driver used to kick me off the bus when I forgot my school bus pass after waiting for an hour for him to come. I mean, I knew it was my fault for forgetting things, but that's who I am. I always forget things. I have always forgotten things and I always will forget things. That's just who the hell I am! He wasn't teaching me a lesson, he was harassing me, as I saw it. I still hold ill will toward that sonofbeach! Yes! I fargin do! I mean, I was wearing a friggin' Catholic school uniform, I was eight, I was waiting in the freezing cold - obviously I was supposed to have a bus pass! But that asshole thought he was teaching me not to forget things by abandoning me and torturing me. OH! Why did I start thinking about that jerk! I'm so mad now.
Let me go back to Gerty! She ended up moving to City Island when I was nine and that's when we had a relationship. Since she worked funny hours as a L'eggs delivery girl, I could go to her house after school, whenever I'd forgotten my bus pass and couldn't get home for free, and she would drive me home. But the best part was that before driving me home, I got to raid her fridge. Since I ate almost nothing at school because I was convinced the lunch ladies were a bunch of macbethian witches trying to poison us kids with hardboiled eggs and chocolate pudding (the smell was hideous in combination), I was always starving when I got to Gerty's place. The best part is she had NOTHING but junk food in her fridge. She had Duncan-Heins yellow cake with chocolate icing, strawberry-banana Jello, Pillsbury Ready-to-Bake chocolate chip cookies and for dessert: Hershey's chocolate kisses! I never got sick from eating all the crap in her house. I was just in heaven and whenever I went to her place and she wasn't home it was so disappointing. The fact that she lived on top of a cemetary didn't bother me at all. I thought it was cool and now looking back I guess she needed all that sugar to get happy, so it was good luck for me.
Basically, I had no time for chit-chat with Gerty. I was too busy stuffing my face with perservative-laden crapfood. But eventually, I started observing Gerty and I realized she wasn't so bad. She was just not interested in being a motherly type like my other two sisters were or in being an entertainer like my brothers. She was having her own fun extending her childhood into adulthood the way I do now. I guess she was more of an influence on me than I thought.
I say "usually" because my oldest sister - let's call her Gertrude or Gerty for short - is one of those classic mental-case older sisters who is bitterly frustrated by her lack of influence on the family. The reasons why she lacks influence (read: trust) will become painfully but humorously clear in my coming posts.
Let's start with the origins of why Gerty was not too big an influence on my life or my way of thinking. (I must mention, however, that her utterly insane persona has made an indelible mark on my psyche just based on it's entertainment value. She's almost created a need in me to know about her nutty meanderings.)
So, basically, Gerty was busy when I was a kid. When I was first born, she was 18 and just about to break out of prison/Catholic high school. She has never been one to change diapers or feed the babies in the family and back then she was no different, I assume. So basically, I don't remember her even existing before I was about five when I accidentally ran into her jungle-themed bedroom to see if I could hug the giant Lion doll that she kept. I'm not sure where she got that thing, but I remember really wanting to hug it all the time. Now a sweet 23-year-old sister would probably have given the thing to her five-year-old brother, but Gerty wasn't sweet. At least not then. Oh, I didn't really want it anyway. Who am I kidding. I was afraid of the damn thing. It was bigger than me and it had black beady eyes. Anyway, I still hold it against her. That and the fact that she was, at that time, a very active swimmer, coach and lifeguard and she never took the time to teach me how to swim. Now I'm a grown man with swim-related issues - but that's a book I might write when I'm older and more bitter. Right now I just want to remember the funny stuff.
Okay, so she was living in that jungle room and almost never home and I barely knew her, but then she came home one day with bleached hair and a huge L'eggs truck. This would mean nothing except that this was the 70's and Charlies Angels was the number one show on TV and Farah Fawcett was THE shit. Gerty just happened to be a near-ringer for Farah with the bleached hair. So, naturally, all my friends were in awe of her. "You're sister looks just like Farah", they used to tell me. I was still annoyed that she wasn't teaching me to swim, so I was always kind of brushing off their comments and saying, "my other two sisters are even better". I still wasn't a Gerty fan. But the L'eggs truck was something to see. This - OK, I will admit Gerty was kind of hot - blond girly-girl driving a huge delivery truck was very interesting to most of the people who saw it. I thought it was moderatly cool until Gerty picked me up at school one day. I suddenly became the most popular kid in my 2nd-grade class at St. Mary's. It wasn't enough to make me most popular in the whole school, but it was a step in the right direction.
Suddenly, everyone was asking me if Farah was going to come pick me up again. I never knew if or when she was coming. It was pot luck with my family. One day I had a ride from who-know's who and the next day I was wating by the bus stop and then walking my eight-year-old ass home from the subway station.
The school was a pain in the ass to get to because it was on City Island - a godforsaken lump of land about three miles from my house on the main land of the Boogey-Down Bronx. (Of course, it wasn't AKA the Boogey Down then, but I had a feeling it was coming, so I'm using it here.) There was no subway there; just a bus. One bus. One slow-ass bus with the same sex-deprived driver day in and day out. In that move, "A Bronx Tale", Robert DeNiro's character is a busdriver to City Island and he's so warm and fuzzy. I guess that guy was dead by the time I was going to school there. My bus driver used to kick me off the bus when I forgot my school bus pass after waiting for an hour for him to come. I mean, I knew it was my fault for forgetting things, but that's who I am. I always forget things. I have always forgotten things and I always will forget things. That's just who the hell I am! He wasn't teaching me a lesson, he was harassing me, as I saw it. I still hold ill will toward that sonofbeach! Yes! I fargin do! I mean, I was wearing a friggin' Catholic school uniform, I was eight, I was waiting in the freezing cold - obviously I was supposed to have a bus pass! But that asshole thought he was teaching me not to forget things by abandoning me and torturing me. OH! Why did I start thinking about that jerk! I'm so mad now.
Let me go back to Gerty! She ended up moving to City Island when I was nine and that's when we had a relationship. Since she worked funny hours as a L'eggs delivery girl, I could go to her house after school, whenever I'd forgotten my bus pass and couldn't get home for free, and she would drive me home. But the best part was that before driving me home, I got to raid her fridge. Since I ate almost nothing at school because I was convinced the lunch ladies were a bunch of macbethian witches trying to poison us kids with hardboiled eggs and chocolate pudding (the smell was hideous in combination), I was always starving when I got to Gerty's place. The best part is she had NOTHING but junk food in her fridge. She had Duncan-Heins yellow cake with chocolate icing, strawberry-banana Jello, Pillsbury Ready-to-Bake chocolate chip cookies and for dessert: Hershey's chocolate kisses! I never got sick from eating all the crap in her house. I was just in heaven and whenever I went to her place and she wasn't home it was so disappointing. The fact that she lived on top of a cemetary didn't bother me at all. I thought it was cool and now looking back I guess she needed all that sugar to get happy, so it was good luck for me.
Basically, I had no time for chit-chat with Gerty. I was too busy stuffing my face with perservative-laden crapfood. But eventually, I started observing Gerty and I realized she wasn't so bad. She was just not interested in being a motherly type like my other two sisters were or in being an entertainer like my brothers. She was having her own fun extending her childhood into adulthood the way I do now. I guess she was more of an influence on me than I thought.
Thursday, April 27, 2006
Snakes
I am and always have been a city boy, which, if you're from outside the city, is a bit weird, to say it nicely. I didn't realize that when I was a child though. I lived in a residential, non-urban area of the city and thought I was a normal American kid. I didn't know that I was supposed to like digging up snakes from the garden and then feeding those snakes to bigger snakes that I kept in a glass cage in my house. I also didn't realize that, as an American boy, I was supposed to be proud of the sound and smell of my own farts and that I was supposed to use cuss words before and after every noun and verb in my sentence. Some kids I grew up with knew this, but I was blind to it, as were many of the kids I grew up around. (Remember, my area was so oddly placed in an urban-suburban climate.) In fact, as I've reached adulthood I've realized that I was not nearly as off as some of them. Or maybe I've just normalized somehow. I'm not sure.
One would think that growing up in The Bronx, I'd have been a regular potty mouth. But I had a very proper Irish grandmother, educated in England and a mother like no other - both of whom had me convinced that I would be struck by lightning and be sent straight to hell if I had even so much as said "hell". I don't think my father even knew most of the bad words in English at that time. Now, thanks to cable, he's learned them. Of course my brothers and sisters were prohibited from using such words as well. I heard my friends say four-letter words all the time, but I just figured they were low-minded, Godless and classless. (Yes, I thought like that as a child. Amazing, I know.)
I recall having a huge fight with my friend, Frankie, when I was about five. He insisted that the word "darn" was not a bad word and I was sure it was one of those words that would force God to kill you. Frankie told me that his mother told him it was okay to say it and I told Frankie that he was a liar and that his mother was a nice person and would never say that.
Later that week, Frankie and his family moved to Long Island. I'm pretty sure it was because his parents were worried that I was retarded and it would rub off on Frankie - in a bad way.
I never saw Frankie again. It was traumatic at the time because although he was technically my second best friend after John, who was my first best friend, I secretly respected Frankie more because his parents spoke with a more mild Bronx accent. AND, they had oscars. Oscars are these really cool fish that eat goldfish for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I loved going to Frankies house and watching the oscars eat the goldfish. Though I was basically a wus when it came to snakes, I was very much interested in seeing small animals like goldfish and grasshoppers eaten alive or tortured in some way. I felt sorry for them but at the same time I thought it was cool.
I had a friend - lets call him Pepe (as you might guess...his name would never have been Pepe, despite what your ideas about The Bronx might be) who was older than me and the brother of my future wife (or, more correctly, the girl I assumed would marry me when I was eighteen and old enough to support a family) loved to kill grasshoppers by filling pickle jars with water and leaving just enough air to form a one-inch bubble on the side and then to stick a grasshopper in the jar and close it. Then he (we) would watch the poor, desperate grasshopper swim to the air bubble and just at it reached it, Pepe would turn the bottle over and the hopper would have to swim across the bottle again! It was sad. It usually took the grasshopper about five minutes to die this way. Absolute torture. Pepe was a horrible boy. And I was worse for enjoying it and egging him on. I was the crowd for which he was playing and I wanted season tickets.
So, yeah. I was a snob, even at five. I didn't like the way my friend John's parents spoke. They sounded uneducated, even to my kindergarden ears. Doesn't that make me sound like a really obnoxious kid? Well, I wasn't. I was so nice to everyone. My mother had trained me to be really nice and to always say "no, thank you" even if I really wanted something. So, of course I would never say, "hey, Mrs. L. You talk like a moron". That just wasn't what I was about. Anyway, I liked Mr and Mrs L. I just didn't respect them.
I was supposed to talk about the snakes and my retarded cousins from Long Island who used to come to my house and dig them up. I'm too tired now, and a little drunk. (Hence, I feel free to call my friends and family such politically incorrect names as "retard".) I will write the Snake story tomorrow. Anyway, you're not missing much. It's not that interesting.
One would think that growing up in The Bronx, I'd have been a regular potty mouth. But I had a very proper Irish grandmother, educated in England and a mother like no other - both of whom had me convinced that I would be struck by lightning and be sent straight to hell if I had even so much as said "hell". I don't think my father even knew most of the bad words in English at that time. Now, thanks to cable, he's learned them. Of course my brothers and sisters were prohibited from using such words as well. I heard my friends say four-letter words all the time, but I just figured they were low-minded, Godless and classless. (Yes, I thought like that as a child. Amazing, I know.)
I recall having a huge fight with my friend, Frankie, when I was about five. He insisted that the word "darn" was not a bad word and I was sure it was one of those words that would force God to kill you. Frankie told me that his mother told him it was okay to say it and I told Frankie that he was a liar and that his mother was a nice person and would never say that.
Later that week, Frankie and his family moved to Long Island. I'm pretty sure it was because his parents were worried that I was retarded and it would rub off on Frankie - in a bad way.
I never saw Frankie again. It was traumatic at the time because although he was technically my second best friend after John, who was my first best friend, I secretly respected Frankie more because his parents spoke with a more mild Bronx accent. AND, they had oscars. Oscars are these really cool fish that eat goldfish for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I loved going to Frankies house and watching the oscars eat the goldfish. Though I was basically a wus when it came to snakes, I was very much interested in seeing small animals like goldfish and grasshoppers eaten alive or tortured in some way. I felt sorry for them but at the same time I thought it was cool.
I had a friend - lets call him Pepe (as you might guess...his name would never have been Pepe, despite what your ideas about The Bronx might be) who was older than me and the brother of my future wife (or, more correctly, the girl I assumed would marry me when I was eighteen and old enough to support a family) loved to kill grasshoppers by filling pickle jars with water and leaving just enough air to form a one-inch bubble on the side and then to stick a grasshopper in the jar and close it. Then he (we) would watch the poor, desperate grasshopper swim to the air bubble and just at it reached it, Pepe would turn the bottle over and the hopper would have to swim across the bottle again! It was sad. It usually took the grasshopper about five minutes to die this way. Absolute torture. Pepe was a horrible boy. And I was worse for enjoying it and egging him on. I was the crowd for which he was playing and I wanted season tickets.
So, yeah. I was a snob, even at five. I didn't like the way my friend John's parents spoke. They sounded uneducated, even to my kindergarden ears. Doesn't that make me sound like a really obnoxious kid? Well, I wasn't. I was so nice to everyone. My mother had trained me to be really nice and to always say "no, thank you" even if I really wanted something. So, of course I would never say, "hey, Mrs. L. You talk like a moron". That just wasn't what I was about. Anyway, I liked Mr and Mrs L. I just didn't respect them.
I was supposed to talk about the snakes and my retarded cousins from Long Island who used to come to my house and dig them up. I'm too tired now, and a little drunk. (Hence, I feel free to call my friends and family such politically incorrect names as "retard".) I will write the Snake story tomorrow. Anyway, you're not missing much. It's not that interesting.
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